Bored? Self-isolated? Practicing good social distancing? Here are five things you could do right NOW to make being at home a much better and rewarding experience!
With the global spread of COVID-19 happening at an increasing pace and both local enforcement of quarantine or self-imposed healthy exile, what is a lover of adventure to do? No doubt you have already run out of streaming shows to watch and memes to make while it seams as if this time will never end. Other than literally climbing up the walls of your home or apartment as some have taken to social media to show off, what activities could the wanderlust do now to better themselves and others? Here is a short list of five things you could be doing right now to jumpstart a better 2020.
One: Clean Your Gear
While everyone is firing up the home distillery to crank out hand sanitizer, you can clean your gear! We never think about our boots, backpacks, rain shells, or tents as disease vectors but they can carry all sorts of harmful microbes and hitchhikers. These tagalongs are a low-risk danger to our health, but they pose a real risk to the environments we travel to and explore.
Every time you travel, your gear can pick up pollen, seeds, spores, microbes, eggs, and sometimes live insects or bugs. When taken from the place they belong and brought to a place they don’t belong, they can harm and threaten endemic species along with the ecosystem. When you take a moment to clean your gear you are taking a moment to leave wild places in the pristine conditions that they are when you find them.
Spend an afternoon getting your gear out of storage to brush, scrub, wash, soak, and disinfect to be better prepared for your next adventure once you are allowed to get back out in the world!
Two: Learn New Skills
Part of getting outside away from the comforts of home is having the chance to test out new skills. Sometimes we forget that even though we might have become proficient in our abilities to conquer the things we love doing, there is always room for more growth. Learning a new skill not only keeps our old skills from getting rusty when we are not out using them, but it also gives us new tools to help solve complex situations we may face.
Sure, you may feel confident in tying a Prusik knot for climbing, but there are over a dozen other ways to make a friction hitch. Whether you hike, bike, climb, rappel, camp, run, kayak, dive, or travel; there are a million new ways to experiment and do the tasks that you are used to. Whether that means finding tutorial videos on how to do something or finding an online publication chock full of great advice (wink, wink); this is a great time to become more pro.
Once you’ve discovered or learned that rad new skill, share it! Instead of flooding your favorite social media with more stress you can share that new skill and encourage others. Like taking a fitness challenge or meeting a pledge, you can use your community around you to take on new skillsets while having fun.
Three: Reach Out to Your Community
We share so much of what we do online whether through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, or messaging that we might forget that now more than ever, people need to hold onto community. Maybe it’s an old hiking pal, bouldering instructor, or fly fishing buddy that could use a positive message to keep connected. Let’s face it, even the most anti-social of us all needs friends who are into the same things that we’re into. Reaching out is a great way to stay connected and keep focused on the activities we are desperately without right now.
There are plenty of viral challenges spreading around trying to keep those connected online away from boredom. Why not start your own within your community of friends to keep spirits bright when the news is dark? Whether its sharing your camping inside or climbing their walls, there are some hilarious ways to stay connected and #stayhome.
Four: Stay in Shape
No matter what shape you were in before this all began, you can stay in the same condition by keeping active even though the outdoors are closed off. Preventing your body or mind from atrophying before your next adventure will keep your spirits up while also not letting you down physically. To stay in the same shape takes some planning and preparation because it can be hard to replicated the physical activities you were once doing.
This may mean that instead of sleeping in, you keep the same schedule you would if you were on the road by going to bed when the sun goes down and rising when it comes back up in the morning. Maybe you need to find a way to keep your heart rate elevated with exercise. Maybe you need to rearrange your furniture weekly to keep your muscles ready for the unexpected. Maybe you need an hour of mindful meditation to visualize the places you are currently being sheltered from.
No matter how you work this out, staying in shape will not only boost how you feel during the midterm, but it will better prepare you for when the all clear is given. It is also the best way to prevent injury, as many people who experience downtime before getting back to a physical activity learn the hard way. A simple way to start might be setting an alarm to remind yourself to stand up and move around every 15 minutes. Even if this means taking the opportunity to catch a little sun while you are sheltered, take every advantage while you can and be creative!
Five: Read and Write (Often)
It is always funny to see the popularity of “what to watch on streaming” skyrocket the moment any of us need to stay home. Whether it’s a snowstorm, a poor air quality day, a holiday, or quarantine from a global pandemic, we are quick to tell everyone we know what the most entertaining shows and movies are to watch.
Instead of training our brains to be more distracted with saturated colors and fast moving action, we can train our brains to relax through reading and writing. Don’t get me wrong, there are some hilarious shows out there right now, but how many of them will help our mental wellbeing while making us more focused individuals? That is why reading and writing are so important to not forget.
Discovering a new poet, absorbing great non-fiction, or recalling one of our favorite moments through story, are all great ways to pass the time while improving our vocabulary and prose. If you don’t know where to start, simply put this question out there and let the recommendations flow in from friends and family. There are thousands of online resources for discovering new authors to read.
The same applies for writing. We are all born with 100,000 bad things to write. The sooner we get to writing them, the sooner we can get to our best writing. It slows your mind and lets you focus in ways that simply talking cannot express.
Don’t let being stuck indoors get you down! Even if you only try out one of these five things on this list, you will be in a better place then when you first self-isolated. There are thousands of other things we can do during this time related to travel and adventure. What are some of your ideas to keep the momentum moving forward?
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