Top 10 Things to do While Stuck in Quarantine

If you're stuck at home because of COVID19 raise your hand!

Now put your hand down, you look silly.

My hand was not raised during that because I work in a medical laboratory. We do routine stuff, so we haven't been swamped. Quite the opposite in fact. No one wants to leave the house, much less go to a doctor's office for a regular pap smear. But specimens are still trickling in, and they aren't going to process themselves. Everyone whose job can be done remotely is working from home, but lab operations people are still working, armed with hand sanitizer and Lysol wipes.

Before I complain, I would like to say that I am so grateful that my livelihood is not in jeopardy due to this obnoxious little microbe. I know people who have lost a huge chunk of income due to cancelled events and closings. If I get sick, my company has offered extra sick days, I can afford the supplies needed to properly quarantine, and I have no fear of not being able to pay rent because of this. I am also grateful that I am blessed with a healthy immune system, so if I get sick, I'll more than likely be okay. I just have the social duty to not infect anyone in a high-risk group, which means avoiding contact with anyone besides other twentysomethings with healthy immune systems.

That said I AM NOT PLEASED WITH THIS SITUATION. Some plans I had made to visit Austin and go to a Renaissance faire have been completely cancelled. A friend's wedding might be in jeopardy. I, a textbook extrovert, am being told to stay away from people. Work is boring because we aren't getting enough specimens to keep busy and haven't been offered to go home with pay (yet). Everyone is tense and suspicious. It's awful.

So, in the spirit of trying to find the bright side to all of this, I compiled a list of things to do if you are stuck at home with nothing but your hoard of supplies to keep you company.

10. Build a water bottle fort. With all of the people I saw buying bottled water, I can only assume that they were planning something like this. Seriously, did you all forget that faucets and Brita filters exist? At least you can now build a sweet fort to hide in and hiss at anyone who dares knock on the door of Fort CovidBeGone.

9. Book a trip for when you will (hopefully) be out of quarantine. Travel has never been cheaper, and the pandemic can't last that long, right? RIGHT!?!?!

8. TP your own house with that 64-pack of toilet paper that you got at Costco. It was a hard battle fought with shopping carts and broom handles, but you have prevailed and now have enough two-ply to keep your hiney Charmin shiny until Christmas. But in your haste, you did not realize that you had no place to store such a hoard, so you might as well use it as decoration for your middle-class prison. Plus, the clean-up will take up even more time!

7. Read all of the COVID19 conspiracy theories. Which one will you believe? The one about it being released on purpose by China to take down America? The one about the CDC inflating numbers so the government can seize power? Is this all a distraction for the humans so our reptilian overlords can finally start their final invasion? Or is that what They want us to think? Time to wake up, sheeple!

6. Clean and disinfect your whole house. As if you weren't already planning on it. Think of it as a very...agressive spring cleaning.

5. Order Chinese takeout. Asian-owned businesses have been hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic, so that $5.99 bowl of Kung Pao from Happy Panda is in the name of helping your fellow man! And the sodium content will go perfectly with your salty attitude over having all your fun cancelled.

4. Find creative uses for all of the dry goods you panic-bought. You have way more of this stuff than you will ever eat. Do you even like some of these things? What even is amaranth and why do you suddenly have three pounds of it? Who knows. But never fear! These dry goods have more uses than just feeding your face! Remember those pasta and bean portraits you made in elementary school? Well you have a whole rainbow of lentils and every shape of pasta known to man, so it's time to find your lost calling as an artist. Layer different colors of grains and legumes in Mason jars and be the next big thing on Pinterest. Use bits of pasta as chess pieces and play a game against yourself....and lose. And at the end of the day, fill a sock with rice, heat it up in the microwave, and use it to soothe the crick you developed in your neck from hunching over your great art all day.

3. Write a memoir of this historic time. You ever feel like you're living in a moment of great historical significance? Well, anyone who's lived through 2016 should (now THAT was one heck of a year). The world is currently so insane that you're starting to check for glitches in the Matrix. Write down your thoughts and feelings on this momentous occasion, so that in a few hundred years, when historians find all of those memoirs, they will discover....that there were a lot of very bored people with immaculately clean bottoms.

2. Cower in fear of our new microbial overlords. If something that is unlikely to kill has this much power, what if it mutates? What if we can't stop it? What if this is the beginning of the apocalypse that will leave humans enslaved by some new supervirus? You can do nothing but cower, so that's what you do.
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And the number 1 thing to do when you are stuck in COVID19 quarantine is...

1. Write a blog post about how bored you are while stuck in quarantine. Did I mention I'M BORED? Because I am. I literally came up with the idea for this post while sitting around at work, bored out of my mind because I have no work to do. I'm grateful that I have the privilege of being bored rather than sick or worried for my future, but I still hate being bored.

I hope I at least could make you laugh with all of my nonsense in this trying time. Remember to rest,eat plants, wash your hands, and stay home if you get sick. But remember, social distancing doesn't mean social isolation. Stay in contact with those you care about in any way you can. Take care of your mental and emotional needs just as much as your physical. Now, I've got a cosplay to work on (don't I always) and some Netflix to binge.

A Lesson From the Convention Floor

So, as you may have seen, I was able to attend Katsucon this year. IT WAS AWESOME. I always have fun at con, and this was no exception. The highlight of this con was definitely the cosplay. It was on a whole different level. The amount of creativity and craftsmanship was unreal. You can check out the pictures I posted, but there were literally thousands of talented, incredible people all gathered there. I could never photograph them all.

Look. At. All. The. Princesses. The amount of fabric in this picture would need to be measured in miles.

This convention brought out one of my general rules for life: always take the opportunity to say something nice. If you see something really well-done or impressive, go ahead and tell the craftsman that you appreciate their work.

When I try to describe what makes convention life special, it's kind of hard to describe this idea. The convention floor is one of the few places I have ever seen where it is understood that running up to some total stranger and telling them how awesome they are is totally acceptable behavior. You ever get a random compliment from a stranger and it just makes your day? Conventions have a lot of that. And I like to bring a little of that mentality to the "real" world.

Now, I'm not saying to just go out and tell every random thing you like about everyone. That's generally considered kind of creepy. But if your coworker is really killing it at a difficult part of their job, let them know. Or if the salesclerk at the grocery store has a really cool hair style, maybe say you like it. Be that random stranger and make someone's day. We have no idea the effect we can have with a kind word.

Have I ever had any real effect with my random acts of positivity? I have no idea. And I will never know this side of heaven. But at least there's a chance I've done some good. And I'd like to put that idea into the minds of my readers. Maybe the world could stand to be a little more like the convention floor.

I'm so grateful for the random acts of positivity that other people have given. They may never know it, but they've given me the desire to keep paying it forward. This is a lesson I learned on the convention floor, but I try to carry it through my daily life as well. I encourage my readers to do the same.

Never miss a chance to say something positive.

Thank you for reading. You're pretty cool.