Surviving Quarantine - A Quarantine Journal

I support the use of quarantine to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. 

But quarantine of visitors like us, fully vaccinated, with negative covid  PCR test results before and after arrival, doesn't make sense. Nevertheless we have to deal with it, to survive the quarantine mentally and physically.

Mental Survival 

Outside of solving challenging problems, listening or reading interesting books, or writing blogs provide me mental excitation, and keep me alert and awake.

Fortunately I borrowed an audio version of the book Nomadland right before leaving Texas. The Oscar winning movie Nomadland is based on this book. The book has an interesting storyline about a community of nomads in US, mostly people near or at retirement age, who are migrant laborers, or workcampers, living in RVs or vans, some even in sedan. 

The subculture of nomad intrigued me, the story of nomads, centered around a widow Linda's nomadic life, griped me. In the first days of the quarantine, I spent more than an hour a day to listen to the audio book daily, I finished the book in 6 days, 8 days ahead of allowed time.

In the end  it is a sad, despairing story, despite the author's or nomads' uplift spin. 

Writing blogs to summarize my thoughts is another mental exercise I enjoy. It stimulates my brain, it makes me to dig deeper for a topic I am interested in, it helps me to reflect. As always, I write blogs during the weekends starting Friday evenings. No outdoor activities, I write more frequently these past two weekends.

Physical Survival

Exercise in such a small space for long would make me dizzy. What I do is to exercise for short time around 10 minutes in the mornings before start work from "home". I would then have some breaks, such pacing in the room for a few minutes, drinking water …

In the short exercises, I typically do 30 squatting, 30 high-stepping, 30 bending to touch my feet, and then a couple minute stationary running (running in place),  occasionally one minute balancing on each foot - a challenge for me though. If I feel like, I would do another 30 high-stepping.

Lily can do one foot balancing easily

Establishing a routine in sleep is important, go to bed, and get up at regular time. Due to jet-lag, this would make me not sleep enough. I make it up by having an nap in the afternoons.

Three more days to go to get out of the quarantine as of the time of writing this post.