Amidst the skyscrapers, where live in the sun tan fearing population, do you see The bricks moulded by those rusty hands , Of the sun-scorched migrants Blackened by the chimney exhaust?
On the hoardings, do you see A dejected young man Drooping on his table, the pills spread out? The creative loner drugging to spark ideas in absence of sleep, For a presentation next week?
Of the cars that glides smooth Do you see that solemn driver Marred by the uncomfortable silence Of the fatigued couple, entangled in a nasty, felonious fight of a young girl suddenly coming In-between their 25 years?
On the driver’s side, His thoughts tossed by the loss of the education he couldn’t complete?Dampened by the happiness To his family he couldn’t give?
In the young boy slumbering uncomfortably under the buildings, As the drain stinked the humid air, While he Drowned in his own sweat and tears; And, the sweltering heat, Do you see the A.C water dripping Near his feet?
If not, You, my sweetheart, The happiest dandy rose of all, Are sure tucked in your urban nest.
No worries, I am as bored as you are and you are as hopeless as I am!
As the nationwide lockdown is getting further and further extended, our mental health agonies are going more and more painful. As much as we want to heave a sigh of relief for the crisis to end, but presently, our mental health maybe crippling undoubtedly. And then, on top of it, is our boredom to do anything.
We hope for Social Media to be a platform for easing our pains, yet we end up constantly feeling dejected for seeing the rat-race in a pandemic. Believe it, people, that’s the reality (or should I say: virtuality? 😉 ). But, whether people go on displaying their glittering smiles or not, I genuinely want you to take time for yourself because if mental health degrades in this crisis, the pains are felt not only by you but it affects your whole family itself.
Sadness, Depression, Anxiety or Panic Attacks don’t respect whether you live in a 300 sq. feet apartment or a 3000 sq. feet sprawling mansion. You are as vulnerable to the grips of mental health degradation as much as I am or any of the readers of this blog.
So, to keep you mind sane and intact atleast for now, scroll down below to check out what you can do to be in a better state of mind because if you are happy, the rays of joy uplifts other as well. And the world needs to be nothing more than a happy place we deserve to live in, a happy place we need to create for others.
P.S- you can also scroll to the end, the middle part is basically craps if you’re anxious at a different level.
If you are blessed with a good yard or a balcony and have pots, seeds and soil in advance, don’t wait, now is the perfect time to create your own vegetable or flower garden you have been aspiring to do so.
For vegetable gardening:
If you lack the seeds, here’s a suggestion for you: for growing tomatoes, store brought tomatoes work fine and you can just plant them in the soil simply or you can follow the picture below. Or for growing turmerics or ginger, simply bury the rhizomes in the soil and with proper caring, fermentation and irrigation, withing a week or a fortnight, you’ll be able to see new leaf springing up from the lush, chocolatey soil.
Youtube is filled with so many knowledgable videos about gardening, I mean, I really don’t have to explain much more about veggies at all.
Flower cultivation is tougher than vegetable gardening, but if you have moss roses somwhere, simply pluck the stems and plant it in the soil, and it hardly needs any nourishment. Or, if possible, acquire some cuttings of Hibiscus and Roses cut at a 45 degree angle and follow the steps by clicking this blue texts for HIBISCUS and here for ROSE.
Also, if you have other such marvelous ideas for a flower garden, do share it in the comments section below.
For CHEAP-like-me gardening:
There is no sense of shame to tell you I am thrifty like you are. When entering a shopping mall, I go straight to check the price tag of the clothing item and then i decide whether I like it or not.
Jokes aside, if you really don’t have time or the enthusiastic effort to let alone touch the soil, fill the pots with it, shovelling the mud and yada, yada, here’s my take of the cheap style of gardening that I had done just to add a dash of green in my house.
◘Money plant and bamboos work fine if you just add it in a glass bottle, for which, adhering to the idea of sustainability, you can use old ketchup glass bottles or wine bottles. More transparent, the better looking!
◘ Succulents and cactus are so easy-to-care for plants that the only step you need to take is just plant them, and water them the day you think the plant lacks it.
Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, that’s basically it. They don’t complain and go moodily brown if you don’t care for them. In simple sense, they don’t care for water as you don’t care for watering them.
◘ Snake plants are your best house mates. Whether it is Mother-in-law’s tongue or bird’s nest as shown in the picture, snake plants purify the air around the house as much as they add a dash of greenery in our concretised houses, maintaining and balancing human-nature equilibrium.
◎ Listening to Music
Don’t deny, music helps you, right? Breaking the boundary of language and cultures, music fingers the strings of our soul when the mood is sunken and damp. In such a time of boredom and distress, we can sure try to shake off the sadness with good, happy beats. And, that’s why listening to a some happy tunes elevate our souls, channels some kind of unknown energy to be awake yet lost in fantasy (which, I feel, is actually good in sad times).
So, no more babbling. Transcending barriers and boundaries, here is a list of good-to-listen tunes to make you jump with some joy, and if you want, go shake your legs in front of the mirror for a good dance therapy and an energy-filled dance workout!
Even though the language I speak may not match yours but, c’mon, music isn’t about language, is it? You just need to soar away with the groovy tunes and take a flight with it!
Alright, all my aunts and uncles deserve a round of applause for brightening the mood with forwarded funny tiktok videos and jokes, and brightening my mornings with a virtual bouquet of flowers captioned with some quotes ending with a good morning.
But, there’s always an edge to reading good humoured jokes, the punchlines at the end making you cough with tear-eyed laughter.
Jokes from Readers’ Digest or www.laughfactory.com are hilarious as Kim-Jong Un and Trump being BFFs. Frankly, the edge of reading jokes is that you’ll get a hang of delivering and writing jokes afterwards because, after all, life is a joke and death is the punchline.
Accept it or not, everyone cannot understand abstract, and if some jagged lines really represent something in somebody’s eyes, I gotta wear specs from now on.
Well, there are people who draw good or bad, uff done speaking. Don’t stab me.
Anyway, abstract crap or not, art is aesthetic whether you get it or not. But if boredom chews up your artistic creativity, doodling, the new emerging art, has come to your rescue even if you are or aren’t an artist.
Well, there are people who are good at doodling but, honestly saying, if you are an amateur or a Van Gogh, doodling is aesthetically satisfying to do. Mandala or cartoonish doodle are beautiful arts, and all you will need are just a black pen/marker and a paper.
Yes, now go doodle something because doodling is quite beautiful and messy, much like our lives are, ain’t I true?
◎ Cook something up
Superficially, you only got the idea of being in the kitchen cooking and trying your hand at some dishes. Yes, that is a good way to kill time but no, I meant it literally.
Cook a story, cook the scene out of your window in sketches or writeups, cook up some jokes, cook a fantasy, cook up a minecraft world, cook up playing-cards house or a matchstick house or a cardboard city or a lego town, cook a cross stitch design, cook a landscape art or a portrait face only out imagination, cook a quarantine-video, cook a slideshow of your family. Cook whatever you want!
Let me reiterate again, this is a pandemic not a productivity race. Perhaps, after reaching to the end of the blog, you may not want to do any of it, and it is quite understandable.
You’re stuck in mental health degradation like many here in a virtual world, seeking for some relief from anxiety (or boredom), or migrants and frontline workers struggling in our real world.
But, your attitude toward any crises matters, it either makes you our breaks you. Humankind has sailed over many storms, have paddled against the waves sometimes and yet, we still remain here in present times, in our present world.
I can’t point out why or how after so much of so many emergencies, so many crises and wars, humankind is still existing. After hearing so many news which are hardly any good, humankind along with all other species exist.
Do you know the reason why? Because as much as we have blood-boiling dislikes for somebody, for something, as much as we have acted beastly, waging wars across land and ocean, I can still tell you humanity exists.
Humankind exists because humanity exists. The day when we overcome this crisis, which I hope sooner, I truly wish we as a species become more humane and care more about the earth and its species.
And as for now, I can only give you the hope that:
We shall overcome We shall overcome We shall overcome, some day
Oh, deep in my heart I do believe We shall overcome, some day
People, I get it, everybody does: you are freaking bored to sadness these days. Who wouldn’t be? The viral pandemic has either got you hooked to the TVs or phone screens scrolling through the bad news of cases, deaths, extension of lockdown and people boasting and posting about how productive they have been. And then, on top of that, comes the range of influencers all smiling their flashiest teeth, doing hardcore workouts or making tiktok entertainment.
In fact, you are so bored that reading an article like this is testing your patience to scroll to the end, right?
Join the group, people. With doubling information throughout internet regarding anything and, seriously, about everything, it has muddled your mind, suppressed your patience. And patience has got so vanished from your life that you might be having a difficult time even resting for peace to thought about what to do to beat the quarantine blues.
Look no further, here is the scroll down list of what you can do to be at your best self these days, not meaning it to be hardcore, high-energy filled productive race, but a time of learning to keep your mind sane.
◎A To-Do List
Admit it, people, you have, keep an activity check on Instagram about limiting your screen time on social media, while some, on the other hand keeping Forest app or such time-checking apps, then suddenly, after the exams gone and none seem coming in the henceforth days, you are high on fire diving in the screen, and to hell are gone those disciplined days.
Now, to be frank, when you lose discipline, or a schedule, you may say, your daily routines get crazy. You are then stuck ‘with what to do now’ or more like, ‘what did I before this pandemic started?’ Honestly, things have gone turbulent, but you still can responsible to be on a steady track. How?
To-do list, check it, check it, check it.
If you are the person who seems like you have a lot of things to do but not finding the right motivation, keep yourself organized and grounded with a to-do list, so when night comes and you look at the works you have completed, the night’s gonna be a real good night.
If to-do list is not your thing, maintain a journal if you wish to note down what you have done in a day (even if waking up from sleep, scrolling the news feed ;)) as long as you get this habit of jotting down your works or feelings, a routine will be set to beat boredom blue and black.
◎Start a diary
If you’re blurred with a notion of shy introverts penning down thoughts, emotions, sentiments in a notebook called diary, you’re wrong in thinking that diary are for the shy ones and right in just getting a idea of what diary is. Introverts, extroverts, ambiverts, whatever you deem yourselves to be, you are firstly a human with thoughts getting high in your brain, or incedents you might wanna remember or laugh at.
Now, is like the perfect time to be in a bliss talking to patient, unreactive, non- judgemental papers about how you maybe drowning in lonliness these days when you should be beeathing in the new life spring offers you.
The angst that boils inside because of not being enjoy the sky, the smiles, the crowds, the faces, pen it down. Who knows one day, when the battle against the virus ends, those papers may carry the nostalgic blues of once-in-a-lifetime experience of humankind and may enter the pages of 21st century history. See, my thoughts are getting high now?
you, me got whole lotta history
◎ Poems, Songs, Art or talk to somebody
With the hollow feelings in the heart, there is undoubtedly not a speck of motivation to take the pen or paper while the hung-down feelings bog you down.
Now what I want you to do: take a breath, reflect upon the sorrows and unleash all of it in a creative outpour of songwriting, poetry or art or dance or whatever suits you the best. Or if need be, talk to you closest ones about your sorrows.
As long as you get the the sorrows out of the mind, you will be surely hella fine.
◎Help the needy
I swear to God, even if you are not a business philantrophist, helping the needy isn’t out of your leagues. Go share some food to the stray dog aimlessly roaming around or contribute to the PM fund or share good vibes for the sad folks.
When satisfaction and gratitude sets in the heart, so does joy.
◎Exercise, fellas
Siblings or parents, with whomever you are with, workout with them to let the sweat drip and flow. Because once after that happens, the body will scream to your mind in gratitude.
Make sure, you’re not hyped up to break your limbs and bone! Stay fit, stay healthy.
this will be us, haahhahaha
◎ Start some new resolutions
Oh, well, the humankind is making resolutions, from the government preparing to battle VUCA troubles to us, mere mortals, planning what to particualarly do something in one day; so, it is never too late to chart out plans you wish to do after the period ends.
Truth is and admit it, this unbattled drudgery has taught us many things, about how ungrateful we were to earth or how grateful we are to have people called family. So, pledge to be a good citizen of the earth, pledge to be thankful of to be living, pledge to atleast not hurt earth anymore and stop being sadistic and be compassionate.
The earth needs nothing more than good people.
◎Movies and Books
I told ya, this is not a productive race but a test to our levels of sanity, and to bash up lockdown griefs, go and dive onto thw world of movies. If you aren’t carried away by stimulating scenes, then dive into some trilogy or collections.
Enter the Harry Potter world or the faction-driven universe of Beatrice Prior in Divergent series or peeking a glance at Feluda’s creation while rofling; English books available on the ANYBOOKS app on Playstore. And for films, Netflix or Hotstar or Prime or our good, old TV always come to rescue.
So, people, as long as boredom and the slight tilting towards depression gets mitigated, trust me, Quarantine period won’t be labelled as a boring, saddening period but a hope of reviving humankind to be good, working for the best for the healing planet and healing selves.
Hasta la vista, expect the worst, prepare for the best!
Varied hues 