Quarantine. What started as a 15-day “flatten the curve” experiment has become a way of life. We’re all just waiting to see what shakes down next and trying to figure out the ever-changing rules for re-opening our states. This has been a crazy time for all of us, but I love how this has sparked creative ways to live, work, worship, and get together remotely. We’ve made leaps and bounds toward finding COVID-19 treatments, a vaccine may be on the not-so-distant horizon, and counter-intuitive as it may seem, our world is cleaner than it’s ever been in our lifetimes!

Along with all that, we as individuals have had an unprecedented opportunity to use something we never thought we had enough of: time. I think we all waffled around a bit in those first couple of weeks at the end of March, but here we are, two and a half months later, with a few more things accomplished. Here’s my list. Please share yours below!

7 Ways I’ve Used Quarantine for Good

My friend and fellow entrepreneur Jillian of Marie Mae Company caught me at a bad moment. I was feeling overwhelmed and kind of down, the weather had been horrible, and I had hit a wall. But you know what she told me? “You’re one of the most persistent and productive people I know—two qualities that are required to be great at what you are doing, and you’ve got both! Boy, did I need to hear that! Here are some things I’ve been working on:

1. Revamping My Blog

Ta-da! This is the biggest project I’ve been working on during quarantine, and I’m so thankful that I got in touch with Ken of Ken Smith Designs to do all the big stuff for me. Trying to do it all myself was taking way too long, and I was constantly terrified of messing things up unintentionally, as has happened with my site in the past. But look at it now!

2. Painting and Clearing Out the Guest Room

This has been on my dream list for a while, but honestly there was just never time between our travels, work, and lack of desire to commit to it. But we’ve had nothing but time for a while, so we finally got to it! We repainted a beautiful shade of purple, and the whole room looks fresh and ready to help me find my inspiration!

3. Spending Quality Time With and Being Thankful for My Husband

The absolute best thing about quarantine is the non-stop time with my husband! We genuinely like each other and enjoy spending time together. His job usually can’t be done from home, so this new ability he’s created for himself to make working from home work for him has been awesome! In the past I’ve often wished we had met sooner so we could have started our life together sooner and spent more years together. Now we get to spend all our time together!

4. Trying New Workouts

This is one of the most fun things I’ve been doing in quarantine! I’ve been working out with Candace Cameron Bure, Ashley Graham, and Venus Williams thanks to them and their trainer Kira Stokes! And on Saturdays I’ve been working out with Bethany Hamilton, too! I also started the free trial with the Peloton app, and I downloaded a HIIT timer app to help me start doing high-intensity interval training (HIIT). A friend told me about Self magazine’s workouts on YouTube, so I figured out how to access those on our TV and have been mixing those in as well. It’s fun, different, and way more interesting than doing the same things every week!

5. Starting an Online Course

I was blessed to receive a free membership in Bethany Hamilton’s Unstoppable Year e-course, and just two months in I can tell it’s changing my life for the better. The first month’s lesson was all about being present and especially not letting social media make you miss out on your own life. I can’t get rid of social media completely because it’s an integral part of my job, and I do think there are a lot of good and uplifting uses for it, but my own life deserves much more of my attention than anyone else’s highlight reel. The Unstoppable Year course is full of small things that make such life-altering differences!

6. Writing an E-book

What started as a short story quickly became a novella! In less than a week I wrote 100 pages and still felt like it wasn’t quite done. So now it’s a novella!

7. Sending my Christian Girls Book to Agents

Yep! I’ve had this book written for almost a year and a half now, and I’m finally sending it out to agents to hopefully be picked up for publishing. Wish me luck! And if you know a literary agent who’s looking for a YA Christian non-fiction book, send them my way!

5 Things I Haven’t Been Doing

But let’s balance all that productivity with reality. There are definitely things I should do that have not made their way onto my “next up” list! No one’s perfect, especially me.

1. Cleaning Out My Closet

Wow. Turns out I didn’t simply “not have time” to do this, I just didn’t want to! Can you relate? 

2. Deep Cleaning the House

Wow, do I ever hate to clean! In my defense, I have been cleaning things more often, but as far as a deep clean where all the furniture gets moved and every spec of dust in eradicated… not happening. At least not yet!

3. Finishing the Secret Agent Book I Started Last Year

Hopefully it will be forthcoming soon now that I’m reducing the number of blog posts I publish each week, which will give me more time for my other writing! But for the moment, this project is still simmering on the back burner. My spy mystery is coming! Just not today!

4. Mastering Instagram

Never gonna happen. Not my thing. I’m thankful for the followers I have, and I am always trying my best to give you good, positive, inspiring pictures and stories, but gaining thousands of followers is not my destiny, even when I’ve had months to make it happen! I’ve actually spent years and my own hard-earned, no return on investment cash to take an e-course on how to grow my Instagram. If effort can’t make it happen, I’m done wasting my time!

5. Eating Right

Apparently I’m also not interested enough in this to make it happen. I eat healthy things, but I’ve never boarded the kale train or gotten into paleo-keto-carbless diet options either. I learned a lot of wonderful things growing up in the South, but portion control ain’t one of them! And after winning my own battle with a 22-year eating disorder, I’m not about to use food as a punishment or reward. I’ll have my carbs and eat them, too, thanks!

Now it’s your turn! What have you been up to in quarantine? Comment to inspire us all!

Want more about how to get through quarantine and its after-effects, check out my Health and Wellness Page!

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