We’ve all been stuck in our house for days by now. Every time I go out of the house to get groceries, or a little walk to the city centre I feel a little worried. It feels – to put it dramatically – as if I was going on a supply run, just like from the series ‘The Walking Dead’, only in reality there’re no zombies but the invisible coronavirus that you never know where it could latch onto you.
For me, it’s been about a month I stayed home, having ‘corona vacation’. I finished all the courses from University, and my internship has just ended, so I’ve got nothing to do but to sift jobs on LinkedIn, of which there aren’t many. Things could sound a bit gloomy with not knowing when to be able to go back to normal life, but aside from all the concerns and fears, to be carefully honest, I was having a bit of fun with all the free time I got.
I was thinking about what I have done during this outbreak.
Living to the fullest as a night owl
Like many others, I’m also not a morning person. I’d call myself a bit of an extreme night owl because I keep a strange sleeping schedule nowadays: 8 am to 4 pm. I just love working on my hobbies from midnight to 6 am. I read, I write, I watch movies, I binge-watch series until I finally want to sleep in the sunrise. Doing the same thing, it’s just not the same at night. The air is fresher, chiller, and calmer, which somehow makes me focus better and I absorb books better. Normally I can’t stay up all night because I have things to do or places to go in the morning, but this special period allows me to be on a full night-owl mode.
Hanging out with a friend
One of my best friends was staying with me for a while because of a housing problem, and because of the corona outbreak, we got stuck in the house and can’t go anywhere. We found out, however, that lazying around like a pair of house cats isn’t too bad. Getting up somewhere in the afternoon, we sat together at the dinner table and had coffee or tea. Sometimes we chatted, sometimes we did nothing but watch things on YouTube. We get hungry, we eat. We get sleepy, we take a nap. We sometimes made midnight snacks and stayed up late watching movies or talking up a storm. We’re worried about getting jobs and economic problems, so it’s not 100% carefree time. However, setting aside the concerns and agonies, I’d say we had a pretty good time having a holiday of our own.
Having midnight snacks almost every day and not exercising will have a consequence at some point. But oh well, it’s just temporary.
Going for a walk
Recently my husband and I got a car. Since he’s working at home, we can take our time often to go for a walk together – thankfully, the Netherlands didn’t choose the lockdown policy. He found this forest called Leenderbos, near Belgium. Nowadays, everyone’s staying at home so there is barely anybody in the forest.
Whenever we feel like going outside, we go here to breathe out the in-house air we were holding in and breathe in the air from the woods. It even gets us to sleep better somehow – maybe because we get tired from all the walking. Not just the forest, but to walk in the nature around the house is also super refreshing.
Pondering
This is actually one of the bad sides of staying in the house for too long. You start doubting things and get to ponder unnecessarily about yourself. Are you going in the right direction in life? Do you even have a direction? Have you hurt – I don’t mean physically of course – someone before? If you did, does that make you a bad person? If you did, can you forgive yourself? Is it REALLY okay being yourself?
Writing this, I realized that the corona vacation had me relaxed, but it’s kind of hitting my limit at the moment.
Hoping for the next step
Daily news about corona cases is heartbreaking. The coronavirus is causing many casualties in Europe, in my home country South Korea, and the world, especially among those who are in the front line of helping patients. It’s scary as hell. I just hope everyone is safe.
It’s also interesting to see how people in the world are adapting to the outbreak. For one, even the Late Night Shows – such as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert or Last Week Tonight with John Oliver – are made at home. They are hosting shows in their private house, shooting monologues with their phone camera and interviewing celebrities via Skype. Adding to that, many YouTubers are talking about their anecdotes regarding someone they know who got the coronavirus, or how they have nothing to do at home so they are just inventing new drinking games of their own and play them alone.
I know many people are worried about expected damages on the global economy after the outbreak will have calmed down, and what is going to happen to jobs and so on. It’s definitely not a 100% comforting vacation. But to focus on the good sides, staying home without the distraction of going out wasn’t all bad. I can’t wait to get back to normal life, though.
