I'm sure you have heard this so many times before, but everyone is in a shitty situation right now. Everyone. Even big time celebrities that live in multi-million dollar homes. We are all isolated from the one thing that makes us feel the most human, which are other humans. How ironic, that during this time it's human interaction that we need when the CDC is advising us to stay away from other humans.
It's difficult to stay sane when you can't have those human interactions. Some people are doing great things to stay connected with the people they love the most without becoming exposed to the coronavirus.
My own friends and I have done some amazing things so we can still keep in contact, and not just through messaging. After all of us had to come home from college, our friends who stayed home for college were thrilled that they would get to see us. But soon our parents were restricting us from hanging out with each other. Of course we were all bummed out, like everyone else across the globe, but we had some loopholes!
I'm going to be honesty, I haven't participated in a bunch of these loopholes but they are amazing ways to stay connected. I have had one group of friends go up to our high schools parking lot and park all of their cars in a circle. Some people sat in their trunks, opened their sun roofs and popped out of those or set up a lawn chair near their car. But they all managed to spend quality time together that way.
I actually did participate in a car hangout but with another group of friends. We went to watch the sunset while we parked our cars in a parking lot, one of my friends even brought a portable hammock to lay in.
These parking lot hangouts are an amazing was to still be able to get that face-to-face interacting that we're craving. There are other ways to hangout with people too.
This next example isn't the best way to social distance, but the only people that my mom is allowing me to see are my neighbors and family members. I know, I know. I'm probably getting hated on for not keeping my distance. We know how clean these people can be and we are only hanging out with them in an outside setting with open air and so we don't have germs in each others houses.
My grandparents can be a little needy anyway, so they beg us to come over. However, my mom draws the line there and only goes over when they need her to run to the store for them. We keep our distance without actually keeping our distance.
If you're not into being around that many people I hope you can get some ideas from these other examples I have seen. My local school district sent out an email to all teachers and had them share it with friends about an Easter egg hunt for the elementary aged students.
The instructions were to decorate paper Easter eggs and tape them to your window so the parents of these elementary students can drive by and they can try to find eggs in people's windows! I'm sure that brought a lot of joy to those kids.
Another thing I have seen is my mom and her friends have a "Happy Hour" every other night. They get on the app Houseparty (I'm sure you have heard of it) and they drink a glass of wine together and talk about life.
I hope these social distancing hacks have helped you have hope for the future and I hope they find you joy while having to be stuck in an unfortunate situation. Just remember, there is not a more perfect time to stay connected with the big man!
