(Decontaminating groceries and packages)
Basics
Don’t leave home unnecessarily except to get gas for the car (or pick up mail occasionally from a group mailbox if you have one).
Have all your groceries delivered. Walmart, Costco, Superstore, and Organic Box all deliver.
Keep in touch with out-of-house family via phone, email, messaging, Skype, or Zoom. If you really need to visit, do so safe-distancing. (You want to protect them and they, likewise.)
(multi-screen Zooming with family)
Resign yourself to cocooning and hunkering down. Get used to the drawbridge being closed; mask and safe-distance with neighbors. Put a sign on your front door, indicating you’re not answering and where parcels can be left. Always have a mask handy if you step outside the door. Use gloves to gas up.
You will eventually find that you don’t miss crowds and noise, and that you can function without others for the most part, and that you don’t miss the negatives in the company of other people. (This is the ‘salvation’ part of Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Hell is other people”.)
Beyond That
Focus on life around home. Get things done, especially things you have long been putting off. ‘Make hay’.(Don’t have neighbors or service men into the house unless there’s an emergency.)
Clean house. Downsize and get rid of stuff that neither is useful (which you are likely to use) or beautiful. The rest can go.
Make a plan for each day: what you will do, aim or need to accomplish to help you stay focused. Keep a day-timer to help you record things and to put important dates on it.
What are your values? What do you want to retain from the olde days? What gives your life purpose and meaning in the here-and-now? Make a list of priorities to stay focused.
And don’t forget to build pleasures and fun into each day. Treat yourself like never before!
Spend some time taking stock, reviewing your life, how it’s going, making changes you want to make. It’s your life and what you make of it. (Consciousness and reflections are constant and essential parts of life.)
(kids exercising at school)
More than ever, diet and exercise are essential each day. What you put into your body (eating wisely) and how you stay loose and mobile. Above all, move as constantly as you can–moving all parts of your body and mind.
Mental exercise is more important than ever. Avoid being a mere couch potato watching t.v. and sitting on computer. Sedentary lifestyles kill. It’s that simple and obvious.
It’s also, incidentally, a good time to look out for others. Charitable donations are more obviously good, healthful, and necessary than ever. We are all social animals; “No man is an island”–what happens to others is my responsibility as a social animal. If we can, we ought to help others in need. A no-brainer.
What happens outside your door is what it is. If governments and other people are being stupid and ignorant about the pandemic, you need to focus on your own life and your own family’s life (factoring in maintaining friendships in significant, memorable ways as well).
There is way too much noise out there and it can even get into your home via t.v. and computers; use a Mute with t.v.s during commercials and don’t let your t.v. idly blab away at you; having the Frame channel on with landscapes is a better, relaxing, interesting watch, for example). And, by all means, get a Call Display and phone-message machine if you have a landline phone, so you never have to pick up again without knowing who’s on the other end of the line. No one needs to voluntarily allow intruders to encroach on one’s life.
Watch good and great movies; in other words, don’t bother with most of Netflix’s offerings.
Improve yourself. Do more reading. Read literature and the great writers (they’re all pre-21st century.) Feed your head. Think. Stretch your brain, perspectives, and soul.
Listen to more instrumental music. Be bold and adventurous and listen to more soulful, spiritual music like jazz, classical, or East Indian.
Look at famous art: paintings, sculpture, architecture by the greats. This can be done online, via videos, or books. Take this ample time to enrich your life.
Lastly, keep your own body fit. Beyond diet and exercise, take care of any health concerns before they become issues and problems. You owe it to yourself to look after yourself. As, is apparent throughout this blog entry, you have to do this because nobody else will. And you can’t be good to/for others unless you are good to yourself.