Work, boredom and rhythm in the time of COVID-19.

This article uses Henri Lefebvre's as a foundational text for researching boredom, and offers a critical analysis of UK-based media commentaries about boredom and homeworking written during 2020 and 2021. We situate the discussion within the rhythmic rupture caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and foreground rhythm as a lens for understanding reported experiences and reflections on boredom and work. For non-essential workers, lockdown offered an opportunity to reconfigure working lives away from the constraints of commutes and everyday work settings, yet our findings highlight the narrative representation and experience of a particular type of boredom and inertia known as acedia.

Rupture, repetition, and new rhythms for pandemic times: Mass Observation, everyday life, and COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic has foregrounded the significance of time to everyday life, as the routines, pace, and speed of social relations were widely reconfigured. This article uses rhythm as an object and tool of inquiry to make sense of spatio-temporal change. We analyse the Mass Observation (MO) directive we co-commissioned on 'COVID-19 and Time', where volunteer writers reflect on whether and how time was made, experienced, and imagined differently during the early stages of the pandemic in the UK.

Recalibrating Everyday Futures during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Futures Fissured, on Standby and Reset in Mass Observation Responses.

This article contributes to sociologies of futures by arguing that quotidian imaginations, makings and experiences of futures are crucial to social life. We develop Sharma's concept of recalibration to understand ongoing and multiple adjustments of present-future relations, focusing on how these were articulated by Mass Observation writers in the UK during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify three key modes of recalibration: , where a break between the present and future means the future is difficult to imagine; , where the present is expanded but there is an alertness to the future, and; , where futures are modestly and radically recalibrated through a post-pandemic imaginary.