How To Stay Active and Social During the Coronavirus Pandemic

To halt the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), communities and even whole countries are going into quarantine.

My own homeland, the Bay Area of California, is one such community. We are going to be kept at home for weeks, maybe longer. We have some allowed reasons to leave home, but that may change too. Boredom and loneliness threaten all of us.

I seek to resist those threats, and empower communities like mine. We can keep ourselves active, maintain our social lives, and even virtually explore beyond our homes. All we need are the tools, resources, and opportunities to do so. Keep reading to learn what they are.

Ways to stay active at home

Spending so much time at home puts us all at risk of boredom. We all need a lot of inspiration for how to keep active when we are stuck at home for weeks.

Fun at home

There are many little ways to have fun at home. Lifehack, LiveBold&Bloom, Refinery29, WPRI.com, USA Today and WikiHow have all produced articles you can look to for fun-at-home inspiration. Here are a few favorites from these articles:

• 📖 Read a book, listen to an audio-book or podcast 🎧
• 🏋️‍♀️ Exercise, yoga, or dancing 🤸🏻‍♀️
• 🎹 Learn a musical instrument 🥁
• 🥘 Cook a new dish 🍹
• 🎨 Start an art project or scrapbook ✂️
• 🧩 Puzzles and board games 🎲
• 🎮 Play a video game 👾
• 🗣 Learn a new language with Duolingo and FluentU 🌍
• 👓 If you have virtual reality equipment, there are amazing possibilities ✨
• 💻 Stream shows on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, YouTube, Crunchyroll, and more (Netflix added a feature called Netflix Party, watch shows with your friends) 📺
• 🌲 Visit a park: you will need to know the rules of your region to determine if you can go outside (As of 3/17/20, The Bay Area allows trail and park walks with social distancing) 🌳

Virtual Tours

Many institutions are offering virtual tours that you can access from your own computer. A great way to “get out” and “see the world” while you are kept at home.

🏛 There are many incredible museums and galleries that you can tour virtually: 🛕

• Travel+Leisure and Hello Giggles present some of the hottest virtual museum tours
• Lifehacker has compiled a list of over 500 museums you can tour from your computer
• Google Arts and Culture has art collections of over 1,200 museums and archives

Insider has their own list with a greater variety of virtual tours. Here are a few of the tours they mention:

• 🐠 Monterey Bay Aquarium is live streaming its sea creatures 🐧
• 🗣 The Metropolitan Opera is live streaming operatic performances 🎼
• 🦍 Check out animals of the San Diego Zoo, through their videos 🐅
• 🏰 Disney Parks may be closed but you can still take a virtual tour and ride the roller coasters 🎢

🌳 Thrillist has compiled a list of 31 National Parks that are hosting virtual tours on Google Earth 🌎

Streamed concerts

Concerts may be closing but our favorite artists are still ready to put on a show for us. Many musicians are hosting virtual concerts.

🎸 Billboard and npr are both keeping updated lists on virtual performances! 🎤

Got kids?

👶 The Mercury News, The Atlantic, and The Motley Fool have written articles with tips to keep them happy 👨‍👨‍👧‍👦

Business

Being stuck at home creates interesting business possibilities. Here are three ways to develop your career, stay professionally active and maybe make some more money while confined to home:

💵 1. Do you have a project in mind that you always wanted to start? Having all this free time may be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. A few project ideas: 🌟

• Freelance with your talents, Fiverr and Upwork are two popular platforms
• Start a YouTube channel or podcast
• Write an E-Book
• Build a website or a blog

📚 2. Take an online class, to build your skills 📝

• LinkedIn Learning courses focus on software, creative, and business skills
• Khan University has many academic courses that you can take for free
• Boot Camp Digital teaches digital marketing courses. I’m taking their SEO course right now
• Check out more online course platforms in this article by Upwork

👩‍💼 3. Now is a great time to develop your professional network 👨‍💼

• On LinkedIn, join groups related to your industry and reach out to active professionals
• Invite professionals to have virtual coffee chats with you. These are informal “getting to know you” meetings, done with video conferencing. (Becky Mollenkamp wrote an article of best practices for virtual coffee chats)

👨‍💻 4. Are you wondering how you can transition your business to work from home? Remote workers and advocates are the best teachers for how to make the leap. 👩‍💻

• Remote Workers of LI is a LinkedIn group and favorite posting location for some of the most established experts on telecommuting.

Maintaining an active social life

Social distancing and Coronavirus quarantines put us at risk to feel socially isolated. Loneliness can severely impact our mental health. It is very important that we maintain our social connections while kept at home. Here are ideas and tools to help you maintain an active social life:

Chat with family & friends online

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 There are so many ways to keep in touch with family and friends: 📱

• Video chat with Skype, FaceTime, Zoom, and more
• Talk on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok and LinkedIn all have loads of tools to communicate

Meet new people virtually

🤝 Who says you can’t meet new people from home? Here are a few ideas to keep your social life active and growing: 🥂

• Get more connected with your neighborhood by downloading Nextdoor. This is a social media channel for neighborhoods. Great for keeping up with local news, meeting neighbors and setting up group activities. Hard times are the best time to draw a community closer.
• Join a social media group, Facebook groups for example. Connect with people over shared interests and engage in virtual activities. Check out this awesome ad for groups:

Virtual house parties

A big thanks to these people, who shared ideas and resources that will help all of us through these hard times.

Alexandra C, Jen A, Josephine T, Mandy F, Linda M, Lois W, Nelvin M, Pamela D, Pablo R, Rowena H, Sandy S, Samantha L, Shannon M, Steph S, & Toni M

Do you know more ways to keep a healthy and active life while confined to home? Please share in the comments!