How to cope with COVID-19 Pandemic
Trying to live a normal life during these unprecedented times can be tough. But it may help to think that you are not alone going through this. It’s tough on everyone and we are all looking for ways to cope. This explains my sudden existence again in this blog. Writing has always been my means of coping through the many struggles of my life and this pandemic is no different. Guess I will continue to write my way through better times. Meanwhile, in this blog post, I will share with you the many ways I deal with this pandemic in the hopes that it may help you. When living life in this pandemic gets difficult, these steps have helped me get back up and keep going.

1.	Be Healthy, Eat Healthy, Exercise!

Eat Healthy food to be energized, indulge in your favorite food, binge-eat snacks! Eating good food helps to motivate me. Boost your immune system by eating healthy food, maybe try going vegan if you’ve been wanting to join the bandwagon? Try some detox drinks, yogurt bowls, healthy fruit shakes. 
If you’re feeling down in the dumps, maybe order take out from a new restaurant and try new food recommendations?
Even just a cup of good coffee does wonders! Buy some good coffee beans (even good instant coffee will do). Trust me you’ll feel excited to wake up and start your day if you have good coffee to brew and drink every morning. 
Exercise! Exercising releases chemicals in our body that makes us happier. For me even doing at least 30 mins of exercise a day does wonders. In my case, my exercise comes in the form of the Goof board. It’s a type of balance board used to get better at surfing, and also Nintendo Ring fit!
 It makes me feel good about myself. Makes me feel productive, and seeing the progress, and improvement my body makes over time, really helps when there are days that I’m sad about what’s happening in the world. 
Even though we’re all stuck at home, doesn’t mean we should take our body for granted. During this pandemic, our only real wealth, is our health.  We need to find ways to protect ourselves from the virus and being healthy should be our number 1 priority.

2.	Self-Care

Self-care is anything that helps you and makes you feel good. It can be a long hot bath with a glass of wine, reading a good book while having tea, listening to your favorite music, doing your skin care every night, maybe applying some Aztec healing clay once a week. There are many ways to take care of yourself. 
The world is already tough as it is, there’s no reason for you to be tough on yourself as well. Taking care of yourself also means being patient with yourself, not dwelling on negative thoughts, and doing things that are good for you. Remove yourself from negative environments, people, situations. Minimize your time spent in social media and looking at news. It’s good to be aware of current events, but it’s better to limit the time you spend on these platforms if it doesn’t help you and if it only affects you negatively.
 During these difficult times, inner peace is important.

3.	Rest

Living in this pandemic is exhausting. Are we really working from home or are we living at work? It seems the boundary is gone. And Online classes aren’t any easier than real classes either. We need to make time to rest. Make sure to take breaks even just for 5-15 mins. Eat meals on time, and get enough sleep.

4.	Learn Something New

During this pandemic, I’ve learned so many things, more than any other time of my life. I learned to make Dalgona Coffee, I learned to make my own bubble tea, I learned to bake, I learned to make so many new dishes that I never knew how to cook before.
I also learned to make most of the food and drinks I crave and buy from restaurants at the comfort of my own kitchen! This helped me save lots of money too. I learned to make my own cocktails, different milk tea flavors, coffee (Latte? Frappuccino? Cappuccino?) and many more. What new things have you learned this pandemic?

5.	Rediscover old hobbies

Those old hobbies that we abandoned; we have more time to get back to them again now that we are all stuck at home. In my case I’ve gone back to doing art. It’s been years since I last completed an artwork and I’m so happy I have time to do it again. And as you can see by this new blog post, I’m back to writing again lol.

6.	Talk to friends and family

During this pandemic I learned how it felt like to be so isolated and alone. Especially when working from home and being assigned difficult tasks, I never knew how important it was to be working alongside co-workers in an office setting. Specially when working on a difficult project and working late nights, you feel like you are going through it alone and it feels demotivating. At least in the office you can easily collaborate with your team mates. I didn’t know that breaks, small talk in the office pantry, and casual interactions with my colleagues actually helps me get through the work day until this pandemic hit.
And now that we are all stuck in quarantine, those casual human interactions are gone. I’m an introvert and I never knew how important these interactions were before this pandemic, normally I thought I could go through life without talking to people. But being in lockdown is a whole new level of alone-ness. 
So now I actually clear my schedule and make time to talk to family and friends. Because if you don’t make an effort, it’s really so easy to drift apart nowadays. So set up an appointment to connect with the people you care about. Watch Netflix together with your friends while on video chat. Host an online drinking party. Plan an online quiz night for the family. How about playing an online game like Fall Guys or Among Us. With today’s technology, the means to connect are endless, take advantage of it. Check up on your friends and catch-up with your family.


7.	Practice Gratitude

This is the step that really helped me the most during this pandemic. Before the crap show of 2020 happened, I feel like I took everything for granted because I did not practice gratitude. Now that we are in possibly the worst of times, I learned to look at what I have and learned to be contented and grateful every day for even the smallest privileges that I enjoy. I list down all the things I am thankful for in my life. Even simple things, like how I’m lucky to not be sick. How I have shelter, I am able to eat 3 meals a day, and I have internet connection to share this post. These simple things we tend to take for granted and only in a time of pandemic do we realize that we have so much to be grateful for.

I hope the things that I shared help you cope. How about you? How are you holding up? How do you cope? Let me know.