As most of us are following the wise advice and in some places the actual government stay-at-home order, we are all looking for things to keep us busy and happy. Some are planting gardens and making craft items, some are sewing masks and gowns to help out with this current great need, and some are singing and dancing (check out my dance moves here and please dance along with me).
This positive side effect has many of us are reverting back to the olden days or as my daughter used to say, “the black and white days”. Even though we are all using more modern technology as we spend countless hours on our electronic devices communicating, researching, studying, gaming, reading, zooming and more, a big majority seem to be coming up with ideas and taking actions that reflect a time decades and even generations before all these modern conveniences began consuming our lives, i.e. people are getting back to nature by gardening and wild crafting. They are discovering the people who live in their home by being forced to be together as a family, actually speaking to each other face to face rather than just moving their thumbs on a device. Yes, they’re talking, laughing, cooking and playing games together. People are opening up their minds to crafts long forgotten, using their imagination to creatively come up with necessary items; recycling and re-purposing are becoming the norm as ones reuse things they would have typically thrown in the trash, even sewing cloth/re-usable toilet paper and paper towels.
We live out in the country and just yesterday I saw a couple pull up at the edge of our driveway and do (what used to be offensively termed) a ‘Chinese fire drill’. For those of the younger generations who may not know what that is, it is a comical activity that became popular back in the 50’s (you can view it on a re-run of Happy Days). It then resurfaced in the 70’s, and looks like it may be coming back again. It’s when you come to a red light and everyone jumps out and runs around the car and whoever is behind the wheel when the light turns green is the driver. Kind of like a musical chairs for cars. What fun! I guess these kind of imaginative and innovative activities and items are the silver lining in the terrible coat of COVID-19 that we are all wearing.
What I should be doing is writing, but I really just have had no time to do so yet as I’ve been busy with gardening, making homemade sauerkraut, kimchi and other healthy culinary items, natural products with essential oils, sewing masks and reusable cloth wipes, sorting through my rocks… which as a life-long rock hound, I have a ton of rocks… dancing, and even walking. What have you been doing to stay physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy?
Many of us will come through this with stronger and more robust feeling-and-looking bodies due to all the walking, gardening, singing, dancing and other physical healthy choices we now find ourselves engaged in. But it’s not just us….it’s also our home. We are now making good use of the time we have forced upon us to thoroughly scrub, clean, sort, paint, reorganize, remodel and simplify our living space. Yes, we now have the time to not only start, but most likely finish, all those projects we’ve been wanting to do. Until we can all once again be out there working, socializing and otherwise being around people, may you all stay creatively busy and healthy as we weather out this pandemic storm together.