Cool stuff you've done during COVID/quarantine

phoopes

I did it again
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With coronavirus changing how the entire world operates, things have obviously been a little crazy these last few months. There's been a lot of negative news out there so I thought it would be a nice change of pace to hear some of the cool things people have had the opportunity to do during the pandemic. I know a bunch of people IRL that have picked up a hobby or tried something new so I want to hear more! Anyway, here's what I've been up to.

1. Keeping in contact with people:
Losing my job a few months ago really sucked, but it gave me a lot of free time. I've found that a great way to fill the time is to just catch up with people you haven't talked to in awhile! At least a few times a week I try to call/facetime/zoom someone or a group of people that I haven't talked to in awhile and I feel like it's really helped me since face-to-face social interaction has been harder to come by.

2. Learning/writing new music:
Back in January I joined a band and had a bunch of fun playing shows for the first few months of the year. I really do miss that we're not able to perform right now (our performance spaces are at limited capacity and they only want to pay solo artists not full bands), but not all has been lost. We've been learning a bunch of new songs for whenever we can make our return to the stage, and I've also spent some time writing some music/poetry of my own. With all the free time I have to practice it's really been nice to have that as a creative outlet. I'm a pianist, but I've also had a guitar collecting dust for awhile so I've broken that out a few times too to try and get better.

3. Finding a new career path:
At the start of the pandemic I kind of had no idea what I wanted to do with my career. My degree is in math but I kind of lost interest in it over the years after finding out that being a teacher wasn't really my thing. But as I've been looking for other things to do, I think I found something that's really up my alley: writing. In fact, I just accepted a sports writing internship the other day and I'm liking it a lot already! I think the freedom of being able to work remotely plus the freedom to write about kind of whatever I want (within the guidelines) is super cool and I'm happy to be getting my foot in the door in this industry.

But yeah, enough about me. What have you been up to? Any advice or suggestions on things to do?
 
im back at school now, but i worked all summer in the meat & seafood department at a grocery store. it wasnt particularly glamorous but now i get to be a snob about meat and seafood.

i also got back into pokemon which i cant decide is good or bad
 
I’ve focused in on learning Japanese properly for the first time in probably four years—got an italki tutor n everything!

I’m also way better at Soul Calibur than I was before quarantine (still bad but competent at least) but also worse at Tekken ‘cuz I can’t motivate myself to play without my weekly ;_;

Playing multiple games is hard when u don’t have a local to go to…
 
hit 1k followers on my both my art twitters

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I started and finished Monster Hunter World's base game thanks to Guardian Armour. No help from anyone at all, definitely not, especially 100% not against Kushala and Nergigante.
 
I got a 2DS and Tomodachi Life, replayed some old Wii games (Wii Play Tanks is the best Wii Play minigame don’t @ me), decided to resume playing Explorers of Sky on the Wii U Virtual Console to torture myself by playing Zero Isle Center (aka every job is 9 stars), among other things.
 
Started to get into Pokémon ROMs on my own time such as Pokémon Orange Islands for example. Been having lots of fun with it, but have yet to share my adventure or playthrough to anyone. So for now I’m just telling bits of what I’m playing. Oh and I spend time with my dogs a lot and I love/hate them. <3
 
During the Lockdown I managed to write a short story about a creepy murder mystery that I plan on re-writing. At the moment I'm currently working on a romantic comedy/superhero story. I also jumped head first back into the Twilight Renaissance by reading Midnight Sun and got back into Pokemon through Pokemon Go.
 
Unfortunate global events aside, quarantine has been great for giving me more time and energy to do, well, anything. I've had really low energy for the past few years, and I used to only have enough in me to cook dinner and flop on the couch and look at my phone for 4 hours after work. I don't even work particularly hard (lol) and my commute to the office was like, 15 minutes, so it's not even deserved laziness. But yeah, I've been working from home since March and have been able to reclaim a lot of the hobbies I lost during college (again due to low energy), as well as process some longstanding negative emotions/thoughts/general mental health stuff.

Some stuff I've been doing...
- Trying to get better at longboarding! I've been very reluctant to do it because I'm anxious about passers-by judging me for being bad, but with the streets being so empty these days I've been getting some more practice in. It's been great as an outdoor activity I can do alone. My main outdoor activity pre-quarantine was ultimate frisbee, which I obviously can't do now. I wish I could practice throwing alone but I'm not trying to be Milhouse

- I had mostly stopped playing video games during college with the exception of Ace Attorney 6 when it was released, but I got a Switch at the start of quarantine. I bought and finished both Murder by Numbers and Tangle Tower pretty quickly, and I'm still playing Animal Crossing and, recently, Donkey Kong Country! That one is particularly exciting because I have always loved DKC but only ever watched others play. Now that it's on the Switch's SNES collection I'm thrilled to experience like... Aquatic Ambiance and stuff myself. I'm garbage at platformers but I don't feel bad about save scumming so I am still managing to progress through the game lol. I hope DKC2 and DKC3 will be available soon! If not... open to suggestions on other games to get :]

- Lots of puzzling; I stayed up late every night for a week working on Smogon Puzzlehunt 3 with team P Squad. Maybe we'll be the first Smogon team done next year... I've done some other puzzlehunts during quarantine as well but with way less effort. I also started getting into crosswords late last year and have been branching out into weirder ones like Et Tu, Etui recently.

- I did partial rereads of One Piece, Eyeshield 21, and a few shojo manga series and have reread Fullmetal Alchemist about 3 times in the past few months... I'm doing an FMA book club and "homework" is 8ish chapters each week, but it's so good I can't stop myself from reading until the end nearly every week. tbh I should start a new series instead of just rereading old favorites, but... can't really think of one I want to read.

- Last week my friend linked me this typing test site and I've been casually trying to make my way up the 15s leaderboard... currently #164 globally with a WPM of 172. It's fun, you guys should give it a try!

- Historically I've had problems with not getting my socialization needs met, feeling too pathetic to try to initiate plans myself, and then being glum about it. Thankfully because we are all kind of going through quarantine online together this has not been much of an issue. People (including me) are way more motivated to organize semi-regular online chats/game nights so I've been able to talk with high school friends, college friends, and GP server friends quite a bit.
I'm still thinking of new hobbies I want to get into since I feel like I don't have that many. Also in the nearer future I want to reorganize my storage closet and make Hawaiian macaroni salad.
 
my mental state during quarantine has been pretty bad and im genuinely not happy right now, but I have gotten to do some cool things. dogknees convinced me to try anime; I watched all of Code Geass in 4 days, and Death Note in 5. in terms of new hobbies, ive been baking a lot for my family. ive made each of chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, brownies, cakes, blondies, and cupcakes a couple times now. cinnamon rolls are next!
 
Okay so:
-Watched again "Shameless"; all episodes, all seasons. Emmy Rossum is genuinely amazing.
-Mastered the art of making homemade fresh pasta. Every Sunday my mother and I prepared it. First time it was like dogshit, few times later it was pretty good.
-Mastered the art of making homamade ragù. If you now want some tagliatelle w/ ragù, you know who to contact.
-Did some stuff here on Smogon I guess.

Legends also say I've graduated from university and found a job. This is yet to confirm tho.
 
I've been a fan of UFC and fighting in general for a long time. I've always said I wanted to train, but always made excuses like lack of time etc. Well the lockdown gave me plenty of time, and I'm lucky enough to actually have an MMA bag to practice drills. Its pretty ghetto, but I've actually managed to hang in up from the staircase, and I try to box every day. It's really fun! Great exercise too. For now I'm just sticking to boxing, but I really want to learn BJJ and perhaps Muay Thai also

Oh, and boredom lead me back to Smogon, which is way more positive than it is negative. Writing analyses is fun again, plus the meta imo isn't bad at all. The best thing about coming back however is connecting with people I missed, along with making new friends!
 
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-Finally got around to reading OG Dragon Ball and more recently Galactic Patrolman Jaco
-Did several replays of Pokemon games I haven't picked up in a while including Sun, Omega Ruby, White as well as going through Platinum for the first time. While playing these games in relatively one-after-the-other fashion got tiring at times it was cool to really get down my taste in Pokemon games and in OR's case properly recognize the greatness of a game I once dismissed as like B-tier
-Running the extremely based Megamax pet mod
-Something secret you should (hopefully) get to see soon
 
i wrote an essay early on during the pandemic about a fantasy setting's deities, and why they all suck because Baphomet is better

it's a passion project I've wanted to write for a while, but now that I've churned out all 95k-ish words of it, I'm not sure why

enjoy! if you're into deific diss tracks
 
The world is locked up — people are sitting at home in forced self-isolation. However, the people are not discouraged, because you can find benefits in this situation. Some people communicate more with their family, others have started to get enough sleep, and still others have finally taken up home schooling. Of course, there were also bad moments, thoughts that one of the family members might get sick just by going to the store for the necessary products. I read a lot of information on the internet looking for quick tests and came across the rapid covid test and decided to order. Probably these were the only bad thoughts during the quarantine, but we were able to pass it together with our family and cope.
 
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I decided to make it a challenge to clear Pokemon Colosseum and Gale of Darkness, with the aim of purifying every Shadow Pokemon and transferring them all to Home. No idea why, but the National Ribbon is kinda cool I guess.

Unfortunately, my 3DS I intended to use for transfers died and my area has pretty strict lockdown restrictions, so I can't have my irl mate pass me his...and I need to clear Black 2 for that transfer feature...
 
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