Fortunately, the quarantine we are all in, didn't change my life drastically. I live alone for starters, therefore in between the walls of my own apartment I'm used to spend much of my time at home alone anyway. Although I work for an employer with an office, I worked from home most of the days before Corona thingy happened. Now, customer meetings are held virtual. Nothing new to me, since most of my work life I dealt with my customers through virtual channels (phone, email, Skype, Teams, WhatsApp, Telegram and so on and so fort). Not a normal way of working for the company I currently work for: We have a bunch of offices through my - little - country which always led to many car mileage and unproductive time, since most of my colleagues tend to meet physically. This quarantine time may be positive in driving the culture of meeting physically less. I do hope so!

In my free time, I usually spend a fair bit with friends and LOVE to go to music events: concerts, clubs and festivals. Although quarantine may only be effective for the next two month or so - ending well before summer - I foresee most - if not all - festivals that I scheduled this summer, will be canceled. Damn! Not nice at all!

That said, there are always alternative ways to enjoy music, friends and people.

These days I tend to play more often at home the music I listen to at events; Volume more loud then usual; Dancing more often than normal. By now many artists are playing life sets from their own home or studio while broadcasting through - mostly - the Facebook live feature. At a selected bunch of them, I meet my friends in the chat while enjoy the set played. Although not comparable with the real deal, grouping together around these - virtual - events, gives a feeling of being connected and together.

In normal times, I'm using all known chat apps to stay connected with my direct family (parents, brother and his family) and a bunch of my friends anyway. All of them are living in other countries, or an hour or more away from my home city - Amsterdam - therefore normal modus operandi for me to stay connected through digital channels rather then in the physical world with a high frequency. All the travels I usually did to meet them in person, are simply postponed till later this year. Guess I'll have a busy summer and autumn waiting for me :)

Sure, I also have friends living close to me; Friends I've met up more often; Friends I don't have a chance to meet anymore for the foreseeable future. The way we stay closely connected is through all sort of digital means: more phone calls, more chats, more digital groups, more social media shares and interaction.

I must say, the amount of time I spend on my smartphone dramatically increased last few weeks :)

Since I'm a person who can quite easily adjust to - almost - any situation, and I'm a person who - almost - always find something to do to keep boredom at a far distance; I'm handling these times quite well. Especially since I always try to see the positivity in whatever happens. Most of the time, this character feature makes me feel happy in one or the other way. Dealing with sadness is therefore also easier for me than many people I know.

Recently a dear friend past away - nothing to do with Corona by the way - which made my super sad. But also in such situation, I managed to get more often a genuine smile on my face rather than staying sad and drifting towards depression.

Many ask me: How do you do that?

Not sure if I do something super special; I simply think of all the positive and happy moments I had and have with people; Sometimes this is not easy and I have to force myself into that direction; But it is - almost - always effective.

Nobody in my direct family, inner circle friends or even not so inner circle friends, is ill from the Corona virus. Fortunately no negativity from people close to my heart. Some of my colleagues I work with got ill, or telling their stories of family members being ill, but none of them had to go to the hospital, yet.

My heart goes out to all those being ill and their circles - family and friends - but I can't do more than thinking about them and hoping all is gonna be ok. The best I can do is to prevent becoming a host for the virus and to prevent spread of it to others.

Rules

As in many countries, we have the social distancing rule in the Netherlands, one and half meters in our case; Sound ridiculous close imho. Additionally, the government is encouraging us not to go outdoors when we don't have to. In my case this would mostly keep me at home other than getting my groceries and other basic needs.

I kinda avoid closed spaces, like shops and supermarkets, since the air ventilation can be great, but I don't have too high hopes viruses are contained by the ventilation systems. The open air food market is my place to shop. Good for me most of my fellow Dutch citizens still go to the shops instead of the markets; Every day, I find plenty of food and very few people at the market.

Acting responsible with respect for others

As a good HIVE citizen, I do not follow all the rules of the government. But every rule I bend, I try and act to the intention of the rule. For instance, the authorities closed most of our beaches as a reaction to a whole bunch of Dutchies overloading them two weekends ago. A weekend with fantastic winter-ish/spring-ish days full of sun and an unstained blue sky.

But I still go from time to time. Always during the week - earlier in the day - when nobody is out there. Later in the day more people will go. Weekends are even worse although the police is now sending everybody back heading to the beaches. I really don't understand people in general: With children not in school and most of the parents working from home, why not swap work and free time? Go to the beach during the week, and work in the weekend, or evening? Same for the shops and markets. Weekends people go en masse, while during the week these are empty.

Positive side effects

One of the positive side effects of the quarantine is the time I spend in our HIVE community. With the establishment of our new home, I feel a positive vibe in me to try to contribute more than I already did before. I'm developing many ideas, and for some of them I'm already trying to connect to community members to figure out if we can drive some of those ideas towards reality. Still very early stage; Hope I can mobilise some of our community members.

Another positive side effect is the enormous amounts of fun ongoing at all social media channels you can imagine. I can't remember the time I laughed so much as I did last few weeks. All that laughter, gives a positive and good feeling and brings my mind to the happy places. It even drives me to actively participate in creating and building the fun, which - I hope - gives an extra boost to others to think more positive as well.

Stay Positive

an original
_{all photographs by edje using a somewhat modern telephone device}

_{qsounds music library with more than 300 entries | A...K | L...Z |}
^{steem curator for @illuminati-inc @qsounds}