Okay, so you’ve exhausted Netflix, watched everything on Disney+, and you’re even tired of TikTok. You’re avoiding doing your remote learning schoolwork, because you really, really want to do it all on Thursday night before it’s due. You’re avoiding SAT and AP prep because it’s stressing you out and it’s boring anyway. You really just want to go to a friend’s house, but that is definitely not an option. Goodness, you would even settle for going to Target again–except that’s the last place you should be unless you are buying essentials. And you’d rather not spend time anymore with the people in your house if you can help it. What do you do so you don’t go insane?
Here’s some advice: choose a goal–any goal that you can reasonably complete by yourself in your house without special materials. It could be academic, but I would recommend it to be different from your school classes. It could be artistic, or exercise-related. It could be part of a hobby you usually have a hard time making time for, or it could be something totally random that you’ve never tried before. Challenge yourself to explore a few different options before settling on one or two goals. For an example of how random something can be, I decided to start learning basic computer programming on Khan Academy. I also decided to explore stop-motion videos with objects around my home and a free app.
Then, make time for that goal every day, or every other day. If you don’t end up liking what you chose, you can try something else, but stick with it for a while at least. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on it, but you may find that you want to. And you certainly can now that you’re stuck in one place for who knows how long! Chances are you’ll make pretty good progress because there’s not a whole bunch of other things taking up your time.
Lastly, share your progress with other people by telling them about your goal or by sharing pictures. It’s a good way to reach out to people: Hey, this is what I’ve been doing! How have you been keeping busy? Encourage others to try what you’re doing or to make their own goal for coronacation. As long as we’re all separated, we might as well explore things we can do all by ourselves. We also might as well explore things we wouldn’t otherwise have time for. The satisfaction can be surprisingly real.