During quarantine, I’ve come to realize that most of my favorite activities involve being in public and being with friends. Now that I’m unable to do those things, I have to find things around my house that I enjoy. It’s very tempting to stay in bed on my phone all day, and I will admit my screen time has gotten up to 13 hours in a day.

In order to prevent losing my eyesight from extensive blue light, I’ve been trying to motivate myself to do something productive. I cleaned my room and tried moving my furniture around, which eventually led to redecorating my entire room. I realized a lot of things I would usually pay people to do can be done myself with only a minimal amount of misery. 

Take painting for example. I painted my room myself. It was terrible. I did not think about how difficult it would be to paint around the five doors and one window (yes, five doors) in my room. Painting was the hardest part of redoing my room. My birthday was at the end of March, and I got a lot of room decor as gifts. So I was able to easily plan out the setup of my room. I also got a window planter for my birthday, so I’ve been planting a lot as well. But there was only so much work I could do to my room and my garden. 

So I tried to find a fulfilling hobby. I’ve loved nature for a long time, especially my grandparents’ property. It backs up to railroad tracks, and it’s great to hike on. There’s a tunnel under the hill the tracks are on that a creek runs through. The creek runs into a pond, which is the home to lots of fish and geese. I don’t consider myself good at photography, but I’ve really been enjoying taking pictures on my phone of wildlife. It’s so nice to get away from everything and spend time by myself outside. While I can’t wait for quarantine to be over, I hope I can still find the time to enjoy activities other than watching TV and scrolling through social media.