This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UCLA chapter.

It’s quarantine season which means sleeping, eating and repeating…Wrong! It’s tempting to just lie in bed all day and only get up to retrieve your laptop for your Zoom lecture. But with the extra time you have at home, there might just be better ways to spend that free time. The best way to cure your boredom is to invest your time in something that interests you. Now is your opportunity to make the most out of your time at home to pick up on old or new hobbies.

One hobby might be playing an instrument. For those who already played an instrument before quarantine, it’s likely that you didn’t have much free time in college to continue playing that instrument. For me, I stopped playing the piano when I entered college, but now that I’m at home with extra time, I’ve started to play again. Picking up that instrument that you stopped playing during college is a good way to invest your time while in quarantine. Or, you might want to learn a new instrument! Of course, I’m not telling you to buy a new instrument right away, but you could search up videos on different instruments that interest you. You can also learn music theory, or you can learn to play instruments digitally through apps on your phone or programs online. There are endless possibilities as to how you want to start with playing an instrument!

Perhaps you have only been leaving your bed to microwave frozen food or to eat your mom’s meals. Well, what if you tried to cook your own food? You do not have to cook an extravagant five-star meal, but you could start teaching yourself how to cook by making simple dishes. If you like sweets and pastries, perhaps baking might just be for you. Or, if you want to make delicious dishes that taste good but don’t take up your whole day, some simple foods you could try for starting out might be pasta, noodle soups, fried rice or mini pizzas! Learning how to cook or improving your skills will be a fun experience, and who knows – you might just become the next Gordon Ramsay!

marble and pink notebook — Plush Design Studio

Another way to spend your time is trying out painting or journaling. This could be as simple as buying small canvases and painting your favorite cartoons, album covers, portraits, names, and anything else that comes to mind. Painting is a sure way to manifest your imagination into something visual. Additionally, you could also start journaling! Journaling is a great way to manage your stress, and the journal can be your outlet for your thoughts. You can decorate the journal however you want, and it can hold photos, thoughts and feelings, and small objects that are meaningful to you. You can write about different topics daily, such as self-reflections of your day, random ideas that pop in your head, or memories that you want to record.

Brush Painting Color Paint — Daian Gan / Pexels

With everything being online, it is hard to adjust to seeing people through your laptop screen and being isolated at home. You might feel anxious, sad and unmotivated at times. But by engaging in different hobbies, you can focus your attention and invest your time into things that interest you. Playing an instrument, cooking, painting and journaling are just a few ideas for hobbies that you can pick up, but there are others that you might be interested in as well. By spending time on old or new hobbies, you can maintain positivity by looking forward to doing something new every day.

Start Indulging In Hobbies To Engage In The Positivities

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