Tag: free time

Everything feels so high-stakes. Doesn’t help that the general election is a little over 24 hours away. 😐

Escapism helps lower the bar a bit, knocks you off the daily life tightrope, but sometimes even books and movies can feel like too much. If I’m already wound tight, then I’m not sure that filling 100% of my free time with James Bridle or Adam Curtis is going to do wonders for my mental health. I know, I *promise* I’ll get round to them eventually!

These are some options for low-stakes, low-cost escapism that have worked, or could work, for me:

• Bake something
• Open up a maps app and find the nearest body of water to you, then walk to it and back; you can’t walk back the same way you got there
• Read something by Agatha Christie or Shirley Jackson; even better, do it at the local library or the pub next door
• Go foraging
• Propagate some plants
• Sit in a restorative yin yoga pose and listen to Slow Radio or You’re Dead To Me
• Get out a blank postcard and draw one of your plants; maybe stick it in the post box marked for the postperson
• Make an elaborate pattern in ASCII
• Play Klondike or teach yourself a new single-deck solitaire game
• Go for a swim in the local pool

I’ll try to add to this over time.

Important note: Consider turning off all pop-up notifications on your devices and removing the count badge from your email if you have a Mac or an iPhone. You don’t need any of that gunk, I promise.