Ten Ways to Survive COVID Claustrophia

It doesn’t really matter where you fall on our politicized corona virus spectrum.  You can be a Trump follower who sees COVID as a “hoax” or just a more serious flu hyped by the left to destroy the economy.  Or you can be one of those leftists who wants to save lives by wearing masks and social distancing in the face of inadequate government actions to stop the pandemic.

Either way, when you are told to “stay healthy at home” and avoid public gatherings, and you try to do this to keep yourself and your family safe, you will find yourself soon suffering from “cabin fever,” a term used in American history to describe how people isolated over the winter in a remote frontier cabin became “stir-crazy” as Spring approached and needed to get out.

Since most of us, especially among the vulnerable elderly (which now seems to include folks as young as twenty-five or so) have and do experience cabin fever, I offer these ten suggestions to keep you from becoming claustrophobic, clinically depressed, or brain dead.  These have been tested!

1. Watch restorative television—the Nature Channel, National Geographic or PBS are good choices. Avoid news shows with anchors who have urgency in their voices (that would be all of them).
2. Mute the sound during lengthy, anxiety-producing commercials and during these two-minute rest periods, look out your window and watch a bird building a nest in a bush near your house.
3. For excitement, tweet or facebook your Trump friends and tell them you are switching to Biden; then tell your Biden friends you have decided to vote for Trump.  Allow at least an hour daily to read the messages that follow.
4. It is best to drink wine when reading those messages.
5. If possible, get yourself a rescue dog or cat, preferably one that requires a great deal of attention.
6. Drive your car through the car wash every day.  You don’t need a mask to do this.
7. Catch up on your reading, but avoid dark novels.
8. Toy with those who make nuisance calls trying to get you to extend your car warranty. Ask them questions about just what the warranty covers, how long it lasts, and how their mother is doing these days.  You get the idea.
9. Clean out your “junk drawer.”
10. Send notes to friends and neighbors, asking them to visit, explaining that your fever is gone and you now have immunity that you’d like to share with them.

Ken Wolf