Over this quarantine, it’s become a never-ending cycle of the same boring activities day after day. This cycle had led me to a messed up sleep schedule and sometimes a grumpy mood to go along with it. That was until…Mother’s Day!
At the start of Mother’s Day, my mom and I were going about a normal day in the life of quarantine, but I knew that had to change. After a daily walk together, we came back home and I told my mom I had a surprise for her.
I turned on the television, and on the screen was my mom’s favorite movie. She got so happy and told me she hadn’t seen this movie in 15 years. We watched the movie and I absolutely loved it.
That’s when it hit me. Everyone has a favorite movie, book, song, recipe, etc. and those things are very important. Watching my mom’s favorite movie, not only gave us something to do during quarantine, but it made our relationship stronger. We now could talk about her favorite movie and also find similar movies to watch.
After that day, I had a whole new perspective. I started asking multiple family members and friends their favorite things. I asked them, out of nowhere, what their favorite song, book, movie and/or recipe was. I bet this caused some confusion because I didn’t even mention why I was asking, but they agreed and gave me an abundance of answers!
This led to finding many similarities between my friends' and family’s answers and mine. It also led me to discover many new songs to listen to, books to read, movies to watch and recipes to cook that I never knew about before.
I now have a playlist with so many different genres of music that makes me smile and think of my friends and family. I also have a lot of new recipes to try, including chocolate chip cookie dough dip (can’t wait to try this one) and a list of movies to watch. I even started reading a book that is three of my friends’ favorite.
By doing this, I feel a lot closer to all my friends and family even though we’re hundreds of miles away from each other. Another benefit of this was my mood improvement. I’ve become a lot more productive and less bored during quarantine.
It changed my whole perspective during this crazy time, and it gave me a way to strengthen relationships even when being isolated from a lot of my friends and family.
So here’s my one piece of advice.
Focus on favorites.