Re: Coronavirus and What I'll Be Doing Now

The coronavirus pandemic has gotten more out of hand than anyone could have imagined. As of today, my campus has effectively shut down and sent all students home. I am at my own home with my grandmother, having arrived with all my possessions yesterday. For the next week and half the school is on spring break, and the spring term which would normally take place in May has been cancelled. Classes will resume online, and I intend to work hard and finish my assignments to the best of my ability, as I had been doing before.

That update aside, what shall I do with all the extra time on my hands? I outline what I'm planning to accomplish in my diary. Here's an excerpt:

The world outside may be turbulent and chaotic, but I can make some sense of things with what is laid out directly before me. I have decided I will plant potatoes in the field out behind my house. There is enough room, and my grandmother will be planting tomatoes and squash, as she does every year.

I'm looking forward to a far simpler life. Perhaps in trying to make the most of unusual circumstances I'm being overly-Romantic, but I've wanted to do this for a while now. Something like gardening would be fantastic, a practice to which I could devote all my energies and physical faculties. Growing potatoes, maybe corn, or even turnips or carrots or cabbage would be a great way to use all the extra time I now have. Granted, I still have work to do (my school assignments will now be online), but with the extra time I can do other things, and that way I'll stave off boredom and excess worry and depression.

I'll also be able to regularly update my blog (quod erat demonstrandum), which is usually silent due to schoolwork draining much of my time and energy (and spirit, to be truthful). Really, this pandemic has somewhat of a bright side; it only needs to be found by careful, calm thinking and planning. To quote one sage:

"Let not your heart run away from you, lest your mind grow legs and follow it." --Patrick Star, Spongebob Squarepants.

I've also decided to devote much more time to reading and exercise. I no longer have access to a gym, and the gyms around me are probably closed, so I'll be looking into regimens I can do sans weights and racks.

I've also got some literature suited to the current situation: The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, The Golden Sayings and Enchiridion by Epictetus, An Account of My Hut by Kamo no Chomei, and Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian. The former two are prime examples of Stoic wisdom meant to help the reader endure, and the latter two are "recluse literature", in that they both pertain to isolated living and the spiritual reflections of the individual who undertakes such a life. I'm very much looking forward to these books. 

I will make absolutely certain to update this blog every day, posting my thoughts, the state of things, progress on my potato garden once it's planted, and maybe more poems and those stories that I may at last complete. I will end this post with a small poem, a free-verse haiku which ended today's diary entry:

Last day of winter:

in the dying tree

are some robin's eggs hatching.