PLEASE, check on your elderly neighbors or those that are shut ins. Don't go inside and expose anyone but call them or ask through the door, find out if they need anything...you can always get it and leave it on their porch. We are all in this together!
Please take the social distancing seriously as well. This will protect those with compromised systems and the elderly.
Here are some suggestions from a Professor at Ball State University for getting through social distancing:
Practicing social distancing to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic may sound scary or impossible to do, but there are ways to appropriately handle the process.
“Social distancing can be tough on people and disrupt the social and economic fibers of our society,” Jagdish Khubchandani, a professor at Ball State said. “Given the existing crisis of isolation in societies—with probably the loneliest young generation that we have today—social distancing can also take a personal health toll on people, causing psychological problems, among many others.”
Khubchandani, a health science professor at Ball State University, has recommended 15 ways to counterbalance the effects of social distancing:
- Maintain a routine. As much as possible, social distancing should not disrupt your sleep-wake cycle, working hours, and daily activities.
- Make social distancing a positive by taking the time to focus on your personality and personal health, reassessing your work, training, diet patterns, physical activity levels, and health habits.
- Carve time to cook for yourself and others in need.
- Go for a walk or exercise at home.
- Do not let anxiety lead you to indulge in binge eating or alcohol and drug use. Don’t oversleep, but do sleep at least 7 hours. A recent study found that more than a third of Americans sleep less than 7 hours.
- Think forward and try to make best use of technology to finish your work, attend meetings, and engage with coworkers with the same frequency that is required during active office hours.
- Small breaks due to social distancing are also times to reassess your skill and training- think of an online course, certification, training, personality development or new language to learn.
- Engage in spring cleaning, clear that clutter, and donate non-junk household stuff.
- Pay attention to you social media habits. While you can certainly become a victim of myths, misinformation, anxiety, and fear mongering, you may also inadvertently become a perpetrator, creating more trouble for communities.
- Based on American Time Use Survey and leisure related time-spending patterns worldwide, we spend too much time on screen. Limit your screen time, but watch national news for general consumption and local news to check spread of COVID-19 in your own community, you are likely over-consuming information and taking away time from yourself and friends and family.
- Reach out to people and offer help. Consider providing for and helping those at risk or marginalized (e.g. the elderly, disabled, and homeless; survivors of natural disasters; and those living in shelters). You will certainly find someone in the neighborhood who needs some help, this can be done from a distance, on phone, or by online activities and giving.
- Check your list of contacts on email and phone.
- Engage in alternative activities to keep your mind and body active such as: listening to music and singing, trying dancing or biking, yoga or meditation, taking virtual tours of museums and places of interest, sketching and painting, reading books or novels, solving puzzles or engaging in board games, trying new recipes and learning about other cultures, etc.
- Do not isolate yourself totally (physical distancing should not become social isolation). Don’t be afraid, don’t panic, and do keep communicating with others.
Here are some links for blogs I've posted in the past concerning meals and stretching them, and a bonus one for cleaners.
Again, please check on your neighbors...safely. We need to work together to get through this. Check on them...maybe call someone just to chat for a minute. You don't know the change you could make.
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