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Rather than overreact to coronavirus media hype, set your waypoint & maintain a steady course through these rough seas we call life.
In the midst of the media onslaught on coronavirus, we all want to do the right thing. We hear advice from the experts while at the same time we are deluged with misinformation.
- How do you make sense of all this?
- Do you give into the fear and follow the panicked hoarders?
- How do you stop from screaming at those who aren’t taking this seriously?
Here are our top 5 strategies to stay sane during this time.
1 - Unplug
With the amount of media coverage on coronavirus, it’s pretty hard to achieve a balance. I see a suggestion on Facebook encouraging people to post some good news. It’s a fine effort, I suppose. In my experience, I find it far easier to modify my own behavior than the behavior of others.
So, after updating myself on the news in the morning, I unplug.
I walk away from social media, news feeds, and conversations about coronavirus. This obsessive focus on the latest announcement isn’t healthy for me. It certainly can’t be healthy for anyone.
Find ways to occupy your time. Read a book. Watch a movie. Go for a walk. Play with your dog or cat. Tend to your garden. Learn a new skill.
I am recently retired, so I’ve had to deal with a different transition alongside adjusting to coronavirus. Because I don’t have work deliverables and work colleagues to distract me, I find other ways to distract myself from the media.
I spend my days writing, knitting, talking to Andrew, chatting with my mom and my friends on the phone or Facetime, playing with my cats, going on walks, reading books about sailing, experimenting with a new recipe, generating new content for serenadewind.com, and brainstorming about our future plans on a whiteboard
2 - Introspection
Whether going into the wilderness or carving out a little time on your own, this is a great opportunity to embrace solitude. There are time-tested benefits and we hope you will find inspiration in these quotes:
Originality thrives in seclusion, free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone - that is the secret of invention. Be alone - that is when ideas are born. ~ Nikola Tesla
A man can be himself so long as he is alone. If he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil. ~ Thomas A. Edison
I never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. ~ Henry David Thoreau
I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person. ~ Oscar Wilde
We elaborated on this as well in our post Selectively Social.
3 - Deepen relationships
We’re all in this together. Why not make the most of it? Take some time out each day to talk with each family member. What is each person going through? If the answer is “despair,” check out Trey Ratcliff’s video on this topic.
“Despair is a necessary and seasonal state of repair, a temporary healing absence, an internal physiological and psychological winter when our previous forms of participation in the world take a rest; it is a loss of horizon, it is the place we go when we do not want to be found in the same way anymore. We give up hope when certain particular wishes are no longer able to come true and despair is the time in which we both endure and heal, even when we have not yet found the new form of hope. ~ David Whyte
Brainstorm about your future plans, as we did when we started this whole journey in our Whiteboard post. Look at this collective moment in time to re-prioritize your life. We elaborated on this as well in our post Project Slocum Part 3.
4 - Go into the wilderness
Observing shelter at home measures, which I support wholeheartedly, we have all become quite sedentary. Many of us may also be stress-eating. All this will lead to the nation (or the world for that matter) gaining the “COVID-15.”
All beaches are closed. National parks same. Points of interest around the world where people tend to congregate - they are all shut down. For us personally, climbers are also warned against climbing at their favorite crags during this time.
So, how can we be more creative about spending time outside and yet still practice social distancing?
Orienteering anyone?
A few weekends ago, Andrew and I drove to the Angeles National Forest in the San Gabriel Mountains. I’m familiar with a few hikes there back when I was training for summiting Machu Picchu. With that background, I knew the location of several trailheads and decided if the parking lots were full or if we were turned away, we could park off the side of the road and head into the woods.
I have a compass app on my iphone, and even if I didn’t, we could Bear Grylls our way up and back on our own off-trail hike. Pick a heading or a landmark and head towards it for 2 hours. Hang out in the middle of the forest and breathe in your surroundings. When you’re ready to go, hike back to the road.
As luck would have it, we snagged one of the last remaining spots at the Icehouse Canyon Trailhead for Timberland Mountain. Modern Hiker is a great resource in general for hikes in Southern California. I pulled up the website and familiarized myself again with the route.
The cool part of this trail is that it runs alongside a flowing river, filled each spring when the snow melts or after storms pass through, such as the ones we’ve had this season, We decided to scramble on the rocks and take photographs. While other hikers remained 50+ feet away on trail, we were secluded and adequately distanced from everyone else.
While I can imagine park rangers the world over cringing, we are at an unprecedented time. For those who embark on this activity, remember to act responsibly, which includes the following:
- Keep your distance from other hikers (6’ or more)
- Leave no trace (pack out all trash)
- Dispose of human waste properly
- Keep a low profile and minimize noise
- Respect other hikers and be mindful of hiking etiquette
While more parking lots at trailheads are closed, rangers didn’t seem to stop hikers from venturing on trails while observing the guidance above.
5 - Chart a waypoint
In the end, Andrew and I have found that we take all of the information we gather each day about the events and we weigh them all in balance. Rather than have a knee-jerk reaction to all the media hype, we use our own judgment to chart a course, to establish a waypoint to our destination, and to maintain a steady course during the rough seas we call life.
We hope you find this helpful.
Thanks for reading!
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