We’re all starting to get a little stir crazy these days. Sitting inside and staring at the wall is not the most entertaining thing to do or the best way to stay sane. So, people are trying to find ways to keep busy when they aren’t working or home-schooling their kids. You’ve likely seen posts about it. You can’t spend two minutes on Instagram or Twitter without seeing a post about a sourdough starter or how to do a “Quarantine Haircut.”

I thought I would see what our team members here at Avant8 are up to, in hopes that there is something to do that is less destructive than making yourself look like a Mad Max character. Fortunately, I was in luck.

It’s all fun and games

Some of us have been trying out some pretty common pastimes. For example, video games: a few of us have been playing “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” while others have been replaying some old favorites like “Bioshock” and “Batman Arkham.”

Checking off the to-do list

There is also the usual housework and gardening. Nothing like self-quarantining to finally get you to do those projects that always get pushed to next weekend and yet, somehow,  “next weekend” never seems to arrive. This includes the building of gates and the renumbering and deep cleaning of houses. Some have used this opportunity to really go for it with their gardens. Our content lead, Maddy Miller, has already been working hard on hers. She started sprouting seeds back in March and has made a very impressive plotting map to help when it’s time to plant.

Like a fox

Other members of our team have been getting crafty. Personally, I decided that now would be a good time to pick up cross-stitching again, a hobby I haven’t touched since middle school (as it turns out, my stitching is just as messy as it was all those years ago). Kara Rhodes, one of my fellow content writers, has been refinishing furniture. She started with a coffee table, taking it apart, sanding it and painting it a lovely glossy white. Next, she’s going to be refinishing a hutch.

Diving back in

One of the good things about a Stay-at-Home Order is that it gives you a chance to get back into things that you’ve missed. Since the beginning of this year, I’ve been in one of the worst reading slumps of my life. If you know me, you know that I find reading slumps beyond frustrating. Spending so much time at home has given me a chance to bury my nose back where it belongs: in a book.

One of our project leads, Tasha Wheelhouse, has been using this time to refine a longtime project of hers. She has been revamping her horror podcast Copper Shock. To have her tell it, “For the longest time I’d look at how broken I had let my hosting website get, and would cringe at how many man-hours it would take to get it back on its feet. But since I’ve been home, I’ve been able to channel creative energy into creating new stories and branching off into this year’s season. A season centered around dreams submitted from listeners and personal friends and family.”

Keeping close

Many of us have noted the importance of staying emotionally close to others, even if we can’t be physically close. Our other project lead, Brad Pyles, and his wife have been taking advantage of STEAM’s screen sharing to play Jackbox games with some friends of theirs. Meanwhile, Hamza Refaie, one of our web developers, has been using Virtual Reality to spend time with his friends, especially ones that he doesn’t get to see much. As he puts it, “[It] feels a lot more immersive than just being on a phone call to me.”

If you’re bored in quarantine, just know there is much more to do than just destroying your hair or baking more bread than any human being could possibly eat. Just because you can’t go to a movie or the gym, doesn’t mean that you can’t keep yourself entertained or keep improving yourself. You just have to get a little creative.