Saturday, March 28. The date looms in my brain like a get out of jail free card.

It marks my 14th and final day of self-quarantine. I was in Dunedin, Fla., covering Blue Jays spring training earlier this month, when the novel coronavirus hit North America with vigour.

The world has changed quickly since the wee hours of March 14, when I breezed through customs at Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport with nothing but a kiosk inquiring about my recent whereabouts and no questions or suggestions regarding my health.

And my world has become smaller, confined to my apartment but for one walk outside that caused more stress, as a possible carrier, than peace of mind.

I’m hardly alone in staying put for two weeks. My hope is that all travellers have been doing the same thing, at the urging of public health officials and government. As of midnight on March 25, the federal government invoked the Quarantine Act to enforce mandatory self-isolation for 14 days for people returning from outside the country.

With all non-essential services in Ontario closed for two weeks beginning at midnight on March 24, it’s not like there’s much to do.

That’s where it begins to dawn on me — the day my quarantine ends will hardly look any different than any other day of the past two weeks.

This move to flatten the curve and avoid getting COVID-19 is a marathon, not a sprint — pardon the sportswriter language. On Sunday, when I get out of self-isolation, things won’t go right back to normal.

It is a deflating feeling.

Isolation is tricky, said Steve Joordens, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, who is also in self quarantine after attending a conference in New Orleans earlier this month.

People like to know when the isolation will end. They rally their resources to get there.

So now you have this date, which is your freedom to go out and do something, said Joordens.

There’s no doubt on a psychological level ... it gives you a sense of, ‘I’m going to be able to breathe then.’ ”

It gets difficult when it becomes clear that there is no end in sight because “it doesn’t allow us to feel like we’re really doing much of anything,” Joordens said.

We are all managing our anxiety during this pandemic and Joordens said our fight-or-flight response, which senses danger and compels a person to fight or run away from the threat, kicks in as we are told to stay inside.

He ponders whether the 14-day isolation period set out by public officials is, in part, a method of panic management. Moving people from complete and utter freedom to total lockdown in, say, one day would cause a greater degree of anxiety. It may be easier for people to wrap their heads around staying at home for two weeks, or keeping kids out of school for two weeks, than the longer stretches of time the country is now facing.

“If they had told us right off the get-go it was going to be 60 (days) we probably would have been like, ‘No way, what the hell, why is it so crazy?’ We might have fought it more,” Joordens said.

Dr. David Gratzer, a psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, is not convinced specifying a 14-day quarantine period allows people to digest this crisis in more manageable bits. It could make things worse by propagating a fantasy that things will be resolved once that period is over, he said.

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He acknowledges that it would be unusual for people if they didn’t feel unsettled and said sticking to a regular schedule, exercising regularly, avoiding excessive caffeine, alcohol and cannabis, can act as a coping mechanism. People should gravitate to things they find comforting, he said.

People struggling with mental illness can find times like these particularly difficult, Gratzer said. He urges anyone feeling so overwhelmed that they’re experiencing suicidal thoughts to remember they’re not alone, and to reach out to their health care provider.

“It’s a medical emergency, whether or not there’s a pandemic and you should go to your emergency department,” he said.

People coming out of self-quarantine will need to continue to self-isolate and practice social distancing, but that doesn’t mean they need to practice emotional distancing, said Georgina Zahirney, president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association. A social support network helps people — particularly those who live by themselves — to remember they are not alone.

“Knowing that other people are in this, in a crisis, can be very, very helpful, because it’s not one person, it’s all of us,” she said.

On the positive side, a crisis can be a time to discover our own strength and resiliency, Zahirney said.

Staying put may feel counterintuitive, but Joordens chooses to see it as society’s way of putting that strength and resiliency to work, of taking action.

“We all want to do something,” he said. “Our fight or flight is saying, ‘Do something.’ It’s really important that we all understand that staying home is doing something. If (people) see this as a growing monster, by staying home, we’re not letting it get as big.”

So I have accepted that when I officially end my quarantine this Sunday, the day will not look much different than my cooped up Saturday did.

I will try another online yoga class, FaceTime with a loved one who could use the support and work on being OK with not always being OK. I will take action by not taking action.

That should make it an important day all the same.