Quarantine Come-Up: How I've Benefited So Far

Currently Thailand has been under quarantine for about a month and a half. When everything first jumped off, it felt like the world was closing in on me. I had planned to leave Thailand by now, first to Vietnam, then later on back to the states for a bit. But just as soon as I was approved for the Vietnam visa, they announced that borders were closing, visa or now. “Fine,” I thought. I’ll just go to another place, but then all of the sudden, all borders seemed to close within about a week. It became apparent that staying put where I currently am, was the best option.

 I’m a loner by nature but even this amount of time to myself feels like overkill after a while. The first few weeks my anxiety was on high alert, since I was supposed to leave, I had given up my apartment at the end of February, so I was kind of in-between places for some time. I’ve since settled again, and I feel a lot better. Besides getting the practical logistics squared away, I’ve worked really hard to flip my mindset and make the best out of the situation.

I’ve been cooking a hell of a lot more, exercising each day, and knocking out projects I’ve been procrastinating on. In some ways, this quarantine allowed me to push the reset button on a lot of bad habits I had picked up. In an odd way, I’m grateful for this forced slowdown as it’s given me permission to go with the flow a bit more.

 If you’re self-isolating, how have you been using your time? In all the chaos that’s going on right now, what have COVID-19 taught you? What has this pandemic brought to the surface for you?