I think this may be my last entry in my Quarantine Diary. I plan to continue posting plenty of prepping-related diary entries and other articles, but I doubt the focus will be on quarantine, unless we end up back in a government-mandated lockdown. Our COVID-19 coverage will continue until the story goes away. The coronavirus and it aftereffects are something that I expect will concern preppers anyone else with a strong sense or self-preservation for some time.
We are not giving up on quarantine, but we are relaxing our personal lockdown a bit. We’re planning to have friends over next week and grill outdoors.
As quarantine winds down and we look back at the past 10+ weeks, I think we should all take stock and ask ourselves, what did we accomplish? Here are a few things I did:
- First and foremost, my wife and I did not get sick and the four people we know that did all recovered. That’s a huge win.
- I cleaned, purged, packed, and organized most of the attic and my part of the basement. This included donating items to a program that helps people who are fighting opioid addiction.
- I made some repairs, did some painting, worked outside, and checked off darn near everything on my wife’s “Honey Do” list (she keeps adding to the damn thing.)
- I made my wife brunch every day, we went on a lot of walks together, and we spent far more time together than we usually do. We even played cards and shared had more movie watching times than usual.
- I had lengthy, meaningful phone conversations with my kids, other relatives, and some friends. With all of us being at home and many of us out of work, it was suddenly easy to spend an hour on the phone. This may sound non-productive, but I don’t consider it a waste.
- I’ve successfully refreshed my bread baking and pizza making skills.
- I went through most of our prepping supplies, finding some items I did not know we had, including a large pack of old soap, as pictured. I can only guess that the some of the moisturizing bits must have evaporated over its long (probably 12+ years?) storage. I am happy to report that the soap suds and cleans just fine.
- We’ve also tested some of our preps and made additions and plans to add and enhance them based on the coronavirus test drive.
- I also formed an LLC, bought a domain, got WordPress up and running, started this blog, started a twitter account and a Pinterest account, and started shooting footage for the possibility of a future video channel. I learned what a huge time-suck it is to blog every day, but I’ve been enjoying it. Not sure if I will be able to keep up this schedule if and when we return to ”normal.”
- I’ve relaxed and read at least 40 books, including 8 random library books I had on hand, nine by Thomas Perry, six by Harry Harrison, seven by Robert A Heinlein (with more to come) and as many by Daniel Silva as I could put my hands on.
- I’ve also watched far more YouTube videos than I normally do, and quite enjoyed many of them.
Have I done some things I am less than proud of? Sure! I’ve sat around and been lazy far more than I normally would. I’ve eaten many, many more carbs than I normally do. I’ve become the most nocturnal that I have been since high school, staying up to 2 or 3 a.m. and sleeping until 9:30 or 10 every day – which is super late for me. I’ve started bingw watching four different series on Netflix or Amazon Prime, but only been able to stick with two of them. I’ve spent too much time on Twitter.
I hope you had productive quarantine or at least positive quarantine experience. If you have found yourself cooking from scratch more, spending more time with loved ones, or simply taking the time to relax, I hope you can continue to incorporate these and other good habits into your new “normal” life. Because we might as well get something positive out of this experience.
If you would like to see prior entries in our prepper’s Quarantine Diary, we have a page that lists them in chronological order.
CORRECTION: This was originally published as Day 76 because we were late and it wasn’t published live until after midnight. We’ve since updated the title to reflect the actual day it was written, Day 75. We apologize for any confusion.
