How I Keep Busy in Quarantine in Five Ways

It’s a very hard time right now for many people because of the global pandemic COVID-19. This pandemic has caused a lot of city lockdowns in the country which has resulted to people not being able to work like they are used to. My mom and I are part of that group of people; we have been in our house for almost three months now.  Even though it is a tough time right now for everyone, you can turn this quarantine to a positive situation. By turning this into a positive situation, you are able to try new things, spend time with family and even learn something new. There are a few things I’ve been doing during this time to keep myself busy and bring my spirits up during this difficult time. Hopefully this list would inspire you to try something new and give you maybe a new hobby to continue even after quarantine. 

Journaling 

Journaling is a must do activity for me- this helps me a lot in getting all my feelings down on paper and releasing any bad energy. This activity helps with self-care, you can discover more of yourself in the process. I started journaling before I knew I wanted to write as a profession. I would never forget my first journal that I got from my 6^th grade substitute English teacher when we were watching a difficult movie. She saw I was having a hard time that I cried and gifted me this journal. This is when I discovered this journal can be a safe space for me, and my thoughts. It just stuck with me. If you never journaled- never too late to start. 

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Reading 

Since I had so many books in my TBR (to be read) list and even stacks of books on my desk I thought to myself, “Why don’t I start reading again?”.  So, I did just that this quarantine. But I must say it is so hard to pick a book to read just because there’s so many interesting books I own. It took me a week to decide which book to read first. The first book I read was The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Then the next book, I was able to finish was The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo. Both are very good reads and their reviews will be in a later blog post. I’m not the fastest reader like most people are but I do enjoy making all different pictures in my mind while reading these different works. Reading is something I didn’t do so much before quarantine but I will continue doing it because there are a number of books out there that I still want to read and my TBR pile is still a little large. 

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Baking 

Now, I have a deep connection with baking. I’ve been doing it since elementary school and even sometimes when I was in middle school. The kitchen in the apartment on the weekends would be filled with smells of cookies, cakes, brownies and even more sweet stuff. But this quarantine, I’ve been trying to bake new things like croissants, biscuits and even making dough from starch for pizza. It’s like going down memory lane again and discovering why I loved baking so much. The highlight for me was making dough from scratch. I got the recipe from Pinterest and I had all the ingredients – it was really simple to make, and I loved it. Even though, the end result was a pizza pie – I consider it baking with a cooking aspect.    

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Playing Board Games/Video Games

I know a lot of people do this already but being a beginner gamer like myself, I don’t play games often. I’ve had my Nintendo Switch for the past year and some months, and I purchased a few games that include Luigi’s Mansion 3, Pokémon Shield, and even the newest edition to my game collection- Animal Crossing New Horizons. It’s a great way to pass the time and its really fun to play. I’m currently fixing my island in Animal Crossing so I can get myself to 5 Star island status. This game brings out the creative side of you where you can decorate your island the way you want and it’s one of my favorite things to do in the game. There will be a later blog post on games to get when you are a first-time gamer. But nonetheless, get a switch and get to playing. 

There was a weekend during this quarantine that my mom got the idea to play a board game and that was the greatest idea to me. I was so excited to bring out a game because its been so long since I played one. The first game we played was the game of Life where you start out trying to see what path you want to take- college or career. Throughout the game, you are able to get a house, get married, have kids and even a lot more. It’s definitely a lot of fun when you are playing with another person because we played that game for three rounds and it ended up my mom winning the games. Another game we played was Monopoly which everyone knows about but I loved playing it. I forgot how fun it was to get different properties throughout the game. I won this game though. A quick tip – set a time limit because as we all know it can get pretty long.   

Online Class- Learning about different topics 

We have come to the last in the list that I think is really interesting to do during your time at home which is to take an online class. There are two online class sites which are called Masterclass and Skillshare- each of these sites show different topics such as self-care, learning magic, photography and even creative writing. I decided to try the site Skillshare since one of the youtubers I watch has a class she teaches on the site. The classes that I want to take are mostly writing based classes and also photography classes. I just discovered about this site so I’ve only done one class, but I plan on taking more classes. The class that I’ve taken focuses on practicing self-care and implementing it in your routine while you are doing different writing exercises. The class is called Writing for Self-Discovering taught by Yasmine Cheyenne. I really enjoyed this class a lot and even learned a lot about myself. I can’t wait to try more classes.

There’s more I can add to this list like binging movies I wasn’t able to watch either in theaters or even original movies on streaming services, catching up on shows, having mini spa days, FaceTiming family/friends and even organizing my room which also is a great way to pass the time. The online class was one thing I tried that was out of my comfort zone since I was openminded to the idea. I would love to hear your ways on how you keep busy during this time. 

Lastly, to all the people who are working in this difficult time such as essential workers in all fields, healthcare workers and people on the front line– thank you so much for everything you do, it doesn’t go unnoticed. You guys are superheroes honestly! Stay safe everyone!