More Ways to Beat the blues of the Lockdown Days

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.

You may want to check out: 10 Ways to beat the Lockdown Blues #teenedition (can be checked out by non-teens too)

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◎ Gardening

Photo by Brianna Martinez on Pexels.com

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.

For Flower gardening:

moss rose, if you’re wondering “what’s that?”

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 plants

◘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.

succulents and cacti

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.

bird’s nest

◘ 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.

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◎ 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!

Level of concern by 21 Pilots. source: Yotube…duh

Musu Musu Hasi Deu Ma Lei Lei

◘ Happy by Pharell Williams

◘ Kinu Jadu Aji Bukur Maajot by Shreya Phukan. NOW THIS REMAINS A GEM EVEN AFTER EIGHT YEARS!

◘ Can’t Stop the Feeling by J. Timberlake

◘Liggi by Ritviz

◘The Lazy song by Bruno Mars

◘ Nachde Ne Saare by Jaspreet Royal or Kala Chashma by N. Kakkar

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!

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◎ Read jokes

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

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.

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◎Doodling

here is a doodle art, if you have not been introduced yet

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.

Mandala

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?

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◎ 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!

Because cooking is creativity

And creativity makes us human.

COOK! COOK! COOK!

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some last word gibberish:

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

हम होंगे कामयाब!