So, you know about Coronavirus. New York state has a lockdown in place and has the most infections in the country. The economy has become ill as well. People are afraid, and a lot of colleges have almost completely shut down on-campus operations, leaving people to practice social distancing and stay indoors. This is obvious. Unless you are viewing this many years into the future to find out what it was like during the Coronavirus period in America during March of 2020 (as of now, we don’t know how long this will last). At which, congratulations, you are now reading an article on how people during this pandemic spent their time indoors. With advice like
- Do what you always wanted to do. What you always felt that you were supposed to do.
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Yoga. Whether you want to advance spiritually or just get exercise or relax, this can be fun. If you are a beginner, you can try with some simple poses by googling “yoga poses for beginners” into the search bar. You probably don’t even need a book. If you would like some help, then perhaps search for yoga videos on Youtube. If yoga isn’t your thing, then you can meditate. Whether you are looking to clear your mind and get connected to The Source (from You Are a Badass), or just relax a little, the kind of meditation where you clear your mind can really help with that. There are other kinds of meditations, including loving-kindness meditation, which can be found on Youtube by search “love and kindness” meditation or “compassion” meditation, as well as sources like “Grokker” website and app, Yoga international website, the Headspace app, or many more that you could find by googling. If you have questions to ask or you want tips and advice, you can ask yoga or meditation forums, look up answers on question forums sites like Ask, Quora, Yahoo, sites that specialize in cultivating mindfulness, go to the comments section on Youtube videos about meditation, yoga, or mindfulness in general.
Read books that you’ve been meaning to read, whether at home, on kindle, or by library, online, school, or home. They could be books that are classic and that you have lying around, like The Scarlet Pimpernel, or something that you were always interested in reading but never had the time to do.
Research something that you’ve always been interested in. Like what made the winning teams of each years’ World Cup win and have in common. Or about flappers. I have books like Deep Work (about how to work more efficiently) Born for Love: why empathy is essential– and endangered; doable, and so on. You could finally read a classic you always wanted to have read but never did.
Take Yale’s positive psychology class online at Coursera. It is free (though you don’t get the certificate of completion unless you pay, though you can still complete it), and it will really improve your life. The class has just started, and so far the first lesson is that just by knowing things you don’t change; you actually have to apply them. Like how smokers do know about how smoking is bad for your health, but often don’t actually stop it. I will write more about this specific thing in-depth in a different article which will come soon.
- Explore yourself
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When we are young, it is natural for us to explore everything and to do things that we would always do if we could or get tired. Maybe it’s video games, or it could be imagining things, or reading old books that you loved, like Harry Potter or A Wrinkle in Time. What things did you love to do as a child? What did you do that always made you happy? That you would go on and on doing if you could? Did you play video games a lot? Where they flash games (ones found on gaming websites like Girls Go Games, Kongregate, or cartoon channel websites) or were they console or CDs for a computer? Did you like drawing, or making art, even if it wasn’t a masterpiece? Even though you may not be an expert at these things, we do love exploring and trying new things when we are kids. The whole world is our playground. Yes, you may have trouble with going outside (if you are allowed out at all), but the same is true when you were a kid. So what do you want do? What did you do when you were a kid but your parents were too busy to take you outside? Here are some things you may like.
Look at different hobbies, like gardening, digital art making (like learning photoshop or a drawing program), arts and crafts, singing, and so on. Doing this exploration can be fun whether these are completely new to you, or whether they are linked to you in some way. If you loved drawing when you were young, then how would you like digital drawing or making art. Yes, you can practice your photoshop and make really impressive art, but if you want you can also just draw things in Paint and be as free and non-judgemental as when you were a kid. The point is to enjoy. You can have fun, you can be in “flow”, and all you have to do is put yourself into it and try to enjoy it. If you get bored by let’s say just doodling in Paint, you can make challenges for yourself, such as tinkering with tools like Magnifier or changing the width of the line or using the Fill with color tool, or trying to make a comic strip in it. It doesn’t have to look professional, but you are exploring something new in an engaging way. You don’t even have to make the story professional; just try having fun and use your imagination. Perhaps take it from a movie you saw when you were younger, and mash plots together, like a spider superhero losing his powers and being on the run from an assassin who is killing other superheroes and the villain actually used to be the sidekick of the spider superhero. Or you could use what you were interested in when you were younger, and just try to be imaginative without being too critical, like a magical girl who has a butterfly form and is the only person who can take the magic candy apple from a tree in an amusement park from another planet in order to save the world. At the very least, try doing that is fun and engages you or a kid. Perhaps let a younger sibling or cousin play along with you. Two heads are better than one. Perhaps add that to the superhero story.
Reread a book or book series you loved when you were younger, and perhaps even have a movie-night marathon (Labyrinth, Harry Potter, the Hunger Games if you were allowed to read them at that age, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Little Prince). Plus, the movie night option is a good idea for something that brings the family together, and can help your parents understand more who you were and help you to connect with younger siblings or cousins who can sink their teeth into this. Another activity that can be done as a group is….
Playing games. Not just games like catching and pitching a ball, but like making up your own game where you move around (which comes with the advantages of having some kind of exercise as well as being able to make the game work indoors), or making up your own card game. Or by doing things such as a trivia/Jeopardy game (and make the questions based on old Jeopardy questions or topics your family is interested in). Or by playing board games. Even if you and your family didn’t play them when you were young, now’s the time to do so, as even with working from home, you can’t spend as much time with friends or doing college events as you could before, and will help you feel less isolated along with maintaining connections with your family.
- Connect to the people nearby
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Speaking of board games, they were a fun thing when you were younger and your family did them (even if it was rare). If your parents could play with you then when they were adults and had to go out to work a lot, then since they are not going out to work and you are a young adult, you can all play together. This gets the family (and possible friends) together in an activity that you can really kill time with. Maybe you use Monopoly, or even Uno cards. If you only have a regular deck of cards, you can still play card games like War (where everyone puts down a card in each round and the player with the highest-ranking card gets the cards, with the person with all the cards at the end winning) or find out ones from the internet.
Do baking with your family
Watch a movie on Netflix, from action-adventure movie night like Inglourious Basterds, to Classic but still relevant movies like The Saint, to more family-friendly and childhood nostalgic Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Spring cleaning
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I am disorganized. So is my family. Our house is a mess. Especially when everyone is at home and what process that has been made cleaning up is lost. Especially since it’s hard to get outdoors. So, even though everyone is here and has to share space in a small apartment, now’s a good time for spring-cleaning. But it’s not cleaning so much as organizing. Like organizing the bookshelves and taking rarely-read and little-valued books into bags to donate after the crisis, or doing the same with your closet. If it is more complicated, then to me it would be cleaning out my clothes drawers and then organizing them before putting old and unused ones into bags for donating, or cleaning the top of the desk and then organizing it.
- One last advice:
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What have you been putting off? This is similar to the beginning of the article, but it warrants more in-depth examination. Like a lot of people, when I hear about an upcoming break, from winter break to spring break to summer break, I come up with a lot of things that I will finally be able to do, only to spend that time just recuperating. I rest because of the lack of sleep, and I am so mentally drained that I find it hard to do almost anything, even things that I had to tear myself away from during midterms or finals. So, you should write a list. What are all the things that you were planning on doing when you had free time (which you never really did)? Did you want to watch certain shows on Netflix but worried about binge-watching to the point that you put them off so you wouldn’t neglect schoolwork? Did you see a sale on Steam and saw games you wanted to play but were afraid that you wouldn’t stop them until they were completed (whether a linear story or continuous)? Is there a thick (or not so thick) book that you wanted to read but had to stop since you read so sporadically that you kept forgetting the plot? Now’s the time to do them. You should still make time for school and schoolwork, but since you can’t go to the salon with your friends, have a pizza night with your club members, participate in on-campus events, now can be the time in which you allow yourself to breath. To breathe in the time of Coronavirus (I know that other people have said it, but I just wanted to say it).