Stacey and I have pretty much been alone together since this quarantine went into effect. That doesn't mean we've been hermits. We've both been keeping quite busy, but at a nice, relaxing pace. Both of us are used to being alone. In our younger years, we each spent a lot of time by ourselves for various reasons, so we know how to stay occupied now. Still, it doesn't help the fact that today we are more or less forced to be isolated from physical contact with other people, including family and friends. We stay in touch through phone calls, Facebook, through Facetime, and through Zoom.
We've been getting a lot of work done around the house. We bought it last year and are still trying to get our belongings organized. Two separate near-lifetimes of accumulation adds up to a lot of stuff, even though we both disposed of a lot of stuff before we met. Our house is small, so we've been creative about how to store what we want to keep.
We've been staying physically active. It's not only healthy for your body, but also your mental well-being. Physical activity releases endorphins, which are chemicals produced naturally by the nervous system to cope with pain or stress. They are often called "feel-good" chemicals because they can act as a pain reliever and happiness booster. This is why runners get a "runner's high" and why dancers enjoy dancing. Stacey and I often dance in our living room in the evening, we take daily walks, I ride my bike, and we are doing yard work together.
Sitting around is the worst thing you can do, especially if you're watching endless hours of Covid news coverage. Sitting makes your body tired because it senses you're trying to sleep. The lack of activity makes you bored, and your body isn't releasing any endorphins. Watching the news makes you stressed out because you can't control what's going on. The culmination of this is that you get depressed.
Stacey watches a little bit of news a day just to keep up on what's going on. Then she turns the TV off or watches something she enjoys. I haven't watched any news at all; I get my news from Reuters.com, which is a source that the majority of the news outlets in the world use. I especially don't watch Trump's daily rambles. He makes me extremely angry. I don't feel I'm going to get any worthwhile information from him anyways, so why let myself get angry? I read the summaries of what I need to know.
We do watch TV shows and movies that we enjoy. We've seen some Netflix series, some movies, some Disney Plus, and Stacey keeps up on her shows. I've been organizing computer files, pictures and videos. We take our daily walks, my bike ride, we play board games, we dance in our living room, we sing to YouTube karaoke videos, we've been cleaning together, doing yard work, organizing our stuff, and staying in touch with people.
We're all in this together, and we all need to do what we can to stay healthy.
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