So, you have to quarantine. Whether you actually have the virus, you are showing symptoms, or you’ve been exposed to it and are taking precautions; anyway you look at it, you gotta bunker down. It sucks, I know. Take it from me. I played in a 3v3 basketball game one night, one fucking basketball game, and the next day, two of the tramps I played with said that their delayed test results finally came back as positive. Lucky me. I was about ready to put hands on both of them for being absolute fucking morons.

At this point, I figured I was guaranteed to get it. I mean it’s basketball. With all the tight defense, the breathing, the sweat, I figured it was a lock that I would contract the coronavirus, considering that two guys I played with actively had it. So, right away I locked myself in my room and battened down the hatches. Well, after being Rapunzel in my room for about a week and never having one symptom, I alerted the authorities of my situation, walked to a testing site, and took a test. A couple days later, that test came back as negative. 

I figured something was wrong, so I decided to ride out the storm and remain in quarantine for another couple of days before taking another test, just in case the Covid inside of me had stage-fright. A few more days went by before the second test finally came back as negative. I never had one fucking symptom either. Boy was I livid. I dusted off two weeks and almost went insane, all so that I could walk out of my quarantine exactly the same as I went in. Negative. Keep in mind, by day 14, I was like a cat clawing at the walls and foaming at the mouth from being so deprived of social activity. Unfortunately, as shitty as it was, it was the right thing to do. It’s what Batman would have done. As Alfred said in The Dark Knight, to save others, sometimes you gotta make the selfless choice that no one else can make: the right choice.

Well, I’m not Bruce Wayne. I’m not a celebrity with a glorious mansion containing a field for a backyard, an olympics-sized infinity pool, tennis courts, and other wonderful toys that can make sheltering in place feel like a vacation. I’m going to assume that you, the reader, doesn’t have that kind of access either. All I had was the contents of my simple fraternity house room, which began to feel more and more like a cell in an asylum as my quarantine time went on. After my quarantine time ended, I decided that I should give back to the community and enlighten people with ways to entertain oneself during a period of isolation, based on my personal experience.

Obviously you can play a bunch of video games, binge watch eight Netflix shows, and even surf the web down to its last infinite atom. I mean shit, you can even rub one off every 20 minutes too. Yes, you can do all of these things, but not everyone has access to Netflix or a Playstation. Hell, what if your internet connection all of a sudden goes to shit, like mine did. (Yes, it really did, and I was really upset.) What now? How do you keep yourself busy in the same room for 14 days? I’ll tell you how, and it involves just three easy activities. All you need is your cell phone, which everyone has at this point. I promise you, if you find yourself in a quarantine situation and you are desperately out of things to do, look no further than right here. You will walk out of quarantine a whole new person, in some sense.

1. Breath-Holding Time Trials.

I really enjoyed this one. It’s simple: you just fire up a stopwatch on your phone and then hold your breath and keep stats. After a couple rounds, you will get the hang of different breathing strategies. Soon, you find this inner competitive edge to beat your personal best. Hopefully you get enough rounds under your belt that you will eventually pass out. That’s the goal. You can knock out a whole day or two by doing this exercise. And when it’s all said and done, you are going to have the lungs of a veteran surfer, and chicks dig surfers.

2. Contact Roulette. 

Another good one. This one is more communal; it gets other people involved with your problems, which I believe is very philanthropic and charitable in nature. The object of this game is to create a great deal of unrest for someone else; the more innocent that person is, the better. The game is simple: You open up your contacts and scroll to the letter ‘M’ (the middle). From there, you close your eyes and scroll up a few and then down a few more, building off of this pattern relentlessly for 10 seconds. After ten seconds, you freeze your finger and open your eyes. Whatever contact name your finger landed on is the person you send a message to. Here is where the game gets fun, as there are rules that coincide with your level of comfortability with that person. 

If your finger lands on a person you don’t know all that well, whether you had them as a contact from some random group project your Junior year of high school or its a contact you got because you babysat the child of some mutual family friend eons ago, this counts for a ‘Category One’ text message. The automatic Category One text is: 

“Alright, I think I ditched the cops, what do I do with the body?” 

And then don’t respond. Just let that simmer for a couple of hours. 

If your finger lands on someone you do know, whether it’s a friend or a relative, this qualifies for a Category Two text message. This one is actually broken up into two automatic text messages. The first one says:

 “Hey so I don’t know if this is normal or not, but when I touch it, it makes a weird sloshing sound and now it’s throbbing pretty good. The color isn’t too bad, it’s just got a few hunter greens and cardinal reds in there. Although the reds look more like mahogany.”

And then immediately follow up that text message with:

 “Shit, sorry that wasn’t meant for you.” 

That will give you something to talk about for the next hour or so. The best part about this game is that if someone doesn’t answer, no problem! You just go right back to the roulette table and spin again.

Finally if your finger lands on either Mom or Dad, this automatically qualifies for a Category Three text message. This one is super simple, but definitely the most dangerous. If you are a girl you say:

 “Hi, so… I’m pregnant.” 

Or if you are a guy, you say: 

“You remember Bethany, right? Well, she’s pregnant.” 

The best part about this happens after the text delivery, when you turn your phone off for an hour and let the missed calls and texts build up like plaque. Once the hour is up, you’ll have a good amount of fires to put out, so that will keep you busy for another day or two during quarantine.

3. Count the dots on your ceiling 

This activity is probably the most beneficial for you. Some people don’t have dots on a ceiling, as sometimes it’s just some congruent pattern. Whatever you have, count it. If you make a mistake, however, you need to start over. The cool thing is that this exercise allows you to measure value as well as time. If you hit 10,000 dots, that’s almost three hours GONE, just like that. I know it sounds hard, but you gotta fight through it. The beneficial part comes around the 17,000 mark. I got to 17,852 and then I couldn’t even remember my own name. All I knew were dots. That lasts for a couple days, and then the recovery for that adds on a few more. Once you fully recover, and you can speak in coherent sentences again, you will have a new perspective about the concept of ‘pain’. 

I hope this helps. At this rate, most of us will likely be in a quarantine in some sense, unfortunately. That doesn’t mean we will all get the virus. As I said before, sometimes you quarantine to save the lives of someone who isn’t physically equipped to beat the virus. I’m a twenty year old with a rock solid immune system and I’m not necessarily afraid of getting the virus. But I would go in another two-week lockdown in an instant if it meant that I would save the life of someone else. Why? Because it’s the exact same choice Batman would make. 

The right choice.