I’m extremely bored — What helps me cope during quarantine.
I have no problem being a person that enjoys solitude in the great outdoor but having to spend two weeks (possibly more) in isolation at home drives me nuts. There is so many things you can do in the great outdoors and having that desire of exploration always keeps me intrigued wile hiking or kayaking but at home the exploration is very limited. Eventually the things at home will get boring and mundane but on a positive note, I was able to catch on with the repairs and to-do thing of the house. Knowing the nature of this boredom, I decided to share some ideas that are helping me cope with the home isolation
Do a Spring cleaning!
You know, in the back of your head, that a lot of things have fallen underneath the fridge and said “some other day I’ll get it” and you’ve also seen the spiderweb behind the washer machine and decided to get it later and that later it’s been since you installed the washer machine.
Well that time to clean all the dirty little secrets of the house is now while waiting for this pandemic to be over. So watch a couple of videos on YouTube on ideas on how to decorate and rearrange the house the way you like it, and while arranging it, leave that house sparkling. A lot of the decorations that me and my wife make to our apartment is thanks to Lone Fox by Drew Scott, a his makeovers and decor ideas are amazing and a huge inspiration in decorating the apartment.
Read, read, read!
Are you one of those person that has an obsession in buying and collecting books to then forget them in the bookshelf or random places of the house? Because that it’s me.
Now you have the time to make a schedule during your day so you can dedicate it to your book and please ask the family members to respect your reading time. Usually the best time to read, is very early in the morning while everyone is sleeping still. Just make yourself a nice hot cup of Joe and catch on, on those books that need your time.
I enjoy reading books about the ancient teaching and philosophies of our ancestors, no matter their place of origin, but I mostly enjoy reading and talk about the people of the North, know as the Nordic or Vikings. Currently I am reading Lost Teaching of the Runes by Ingrid Kincaid. Next I will list the some books that I have pending to read (hope this helps for inspiration).
- The Sacred Wisdom of the Native Americans by Larry J Zimmerman
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
- Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
- Towards the Philosophy of Photography by Vilém Flusser
Learn to Meditate
Meditation is not a science, actually it is older than science and is one of the main thing that help you relax during dire time. Also, learning how to meditate is one of those thing that everyone must to learn because nowadays everything is fast and rushed and we need to learn how to step back, relax and clear our minds so we don’t end up like a dynamite with a short fuse.
Now, if you are new to the “meditation” thing and do a small search on Google, you’ll be overwhelmed immediately with commercialized meditation techniques telling you what are the proper way of meditations and that is all bullshit. There are no real steps or must-do techniques for meditation, and each meditation style is unique. I’ll try my best to describe different meditation techniques from around the world, and you try to practice or create a mix of all of these techniques that you like.
- Chakra Meditation
This one is the most common form of meditations and has been adapted well all around the world. It is thought that chakra meditation started somewhere between 1,500BC and 500BC in India. The technique involves a transfer of energy through your body focusing on you seven chakra cores, starting at the root chakra (Muladhara) and ending in your crown chakra (Sahasrara). Each chakra core has been linked to maintaining a mental and physical well being. If interested in learning more about this type of meditations check out this link for a beginners guide.
- Toltec's Meditation
This form of meditation is one of the hundreds of shamanic meditation from the Indigenous people of Mexico. The Toltec meditation is a journey through a series of steps that consist on learning to accept yourself and our actions, whether they are positive or negative, before asking questions on things that will affect our lives.
On a super simplified version of this form of meditation, your goal is to try to reach an out-of-body experience and when you are on that state is where you ask your most essential questions and the cosmos might give you your answer. Is good to learn more about this form of meditation because you will learn how the people before modern civilization maintain a philosophy full of self love, a solidarity towards others during their lifetime. This book, Living a Life of Awareness: Daily Meditations on the Toltec Path by Miguel Ruiz Jr., will help deepen your knowledge about this form of meditation. Also, this book, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Miguel Ruiz Jr., deepens in the philosophy of the Toltec’s.
- Five why’s Meditation
This one is my favorite since is very simple and quick, compared to the other forms of meditation. This form of meditation, also known as the five why’s method, consist on leaning the cause and effects of a particular problem while meditating. This method can be done without meditation, but I read in an article a while back (sorry for not having the source) it mentions that you could deepen your answers to these five why’s if you meditated in a calm place by yourself.
To start, do a breathing exercises where you inhale for five seconds, slowly, and exhale six seconds also slowly. Feel the air pass through you to the lungs and back out. The main goal of this meditation is to try to achieve the answer to your question of doubt in five why’s of less. Once you are completely relax and have a quiet mind, you will start with the question that is bothering you and you will answer it, thoroughly, and then ask another why question of the answer you just gave until you run out of question. By the time you are at your last why, you pretty much have the answer.
Practice a Hobby
Learning a new hobby is a great way to spend time while waiting for the quarantine to be over and you don’t need to spend large amounts of money to learn a new hobby. sometimes the idea of starting a new hobby can be overwhelming because you don’t know when exactly you can fit the hobby in your day to day routine, but now you have all the time to do so.
The next hobby ideas i’m going to show next are cheap to do and don’t require for you to go out.
- Start a new blog. There a a lot of places online where you can start a blog for free such as the platform you’re reading this, Medium. Another platform where you can also create a blog is WordPress.
- If you have a deck of cards laying around somewhere in the house, now is a good time to learn new games and play them with your family or learn card magic tricks to surprise your family the next time you visit them. Chris Ramsay have a lot of card trick that are super fun to learn and practice, also he solve puzzles which are really fun to watch.
- Reading, and I know I mentioned it before but reading is not a punishment and should never be looked like a torture. Reading is another hobby that you can learn and share with lots of online communities about a specific book or subject.
- Play video games; with the the spare time you have, dust off that Atari, NES, or N64 and try to beat those pesky levels that were horrible to beat when you where younger, or download the latest games and try to beat them. For PS4 and Xbox One, I recommend playing Assassins Creed Odyssey and for Nintendo Switch they released not long ago, Animal Crossing: New Horizon.
- Now you can start a podcast, and there is no need to buy expensive microphone equipment or know Adobe Audition because you can do it directly from your phone with the Anchor App on Apple or Android. If you are interested in doing it directly from your computer, you can do so on Anchor.fm.
Start a free online course
Learning something new, that we actually like, is easier than ever with the internet. There are a lot of websites and apps to learn in the computer or on your cellphone.
- YouTube; yes, the very website that we watch our favorite cat video, mash-up AFV style funny clips or video or Russian dash cam accident, is also the Learning Playlist where you can learn about different subjects, such as the one I took with my sister not long ago about philosophy.
- Corsera; here they have a lot of different courses for free with real university professor and for a small fee you can get a certificate pf completion for the course. I’ve never payed for a certificate but their courses are thorough and full of information.
- Khan Academy; this learning platform teaches you a little bit of everything you learned from 1st grade to High School with also some college courses. You can learn everything on math, science, arts and humanities and they also have preparation courses for exams like SAT, LSAT and even the NCLEX. This page is great for when you are trying to help your kid or sibling on the school assignment and make yourself look like a genius.
- Duolingo; if you are interested in learning a new language, this is the site for you. Their app is amazing, super easy to interact in a very entertaining, fun while informative. Their challenges are always push you to keep learning, making it very addicting.
Now I hope this blog helps you cope with the home isolation of this quarantine like it has helped me. I was not sponsored by anyone here, this is all thing that I’ve tried before and found that I enjoy doing on my free time and now in my quarantine. If you have any feedback or think there is something I’m missing or need to be added, just let me know. Later i’ll update this blog and add some images to make it a little flashier.
