There is a time when you get really sick to the point that your doctor prescribes you mandatory rest. Earlier this week, I went to see my doctor only to learn that I had a viral sinus infection and was actually given a note to take a couple days off. Rather than having to go to work all week, I had to figure out what to do to distract myself from two things: my infection and boredom. After falling into a routine of going to work and doing things that are important, I decided to take advantage of these couple days off work and allow myself to actually get better by abiding by my doctor’s suggestions of lots of rest and fluids, but I wanted to push the envelope a bit and see if there was something else I can do to keep me from driving myself insane by staying in bed.

One of the first things I did during my resting days was have a movie marathon. Since most of my time usually goes to school or work on my healthier days, I thought that I should grant myself a moment to just let my brain rot by watching movies that I’ve been wanting to watch but haven’t. My choice to entertain myself while allowing my brain to take a break was "Harry Potter." As far as I could remember, the characters in "Harry Potter" always gave me an escape from the world around me, which is why I thought this movie would provide the perfect distraction.

The second thing I did besides watching movies was giving my eyes a rest from staring at different screens by getting in touch with my creative side. I ended up pulling out some old coloring books and any coloring utensils such as crayons and color pencils and allowed myself to feel like a kid just coloring in the lines.

Another thing you can do while you are sick to keep your mind from going to the world of boredom is playing video games. Now I’m one to play some of the classic games. Nintendo NES is definitely my go-to console, but sometimes I can play some of the newer games with my younger brother as long as he is willing to teach me some of the controls. One of the good things about playing video games when sick is that you are still developing your brain whether it be with hand-eye coordination or strategy. Trust me, when you’re extremely sick, this is probably going to be the only thing you will be good at.

Whenever I wasn’t doing this, I also would use some of my rest days to catch up on my reading. Being a bookworm at heart and having to work to make ends meet, it becomes pretty difficult for me to spare some time to read some of the books from my reading list and this time became precious to me. Just being able to spend a couple minutes reading one chapter of a book I’ve been meaning to read gave me a sense of accomplishment, even though I knew that I might not be able to have time to come back to my book when I got better.

The last thing I did while I was sick, that I definitely recommend to everyone, is to take the time to talk to or listen to others. I don’t mean to obey the orders of going to sleep, but what I mean is to go have a conversation with someone. When you’re sick, your mentality goes down a bit and your need to be near someone will increase. I know I experienced this feeling last week and in order to help, I actually went to see my grandma in her room. Fortunately, she’s always around because she lives with my family. Even though she lives with us, sometimes I spend so much time worrying about my life that I don’t have time to spend 20 minutes with her. While I was sick, I spent some of my time resting on her bed just watching her do whatever she was doing, or just listen to some stories from her past.

There is probably a lot of things one can do when they’re put on bed rest besides merely taking care of yourself to go back to your usual routine. I suggest taking this time to do what you’ve been meaning to do without having to stress about time. Just make sure that you don’t overexert yourself and make yourself feel worse than you already are.