Day 1
I returned home from a short wine-tasting vacation in Napa Valley on March 11. Cultural and social events were getting cancelled as I watched the coronavirus numbers increase around the world. Just five days after my return, my calendar is mostly blank through June, with only two events left in May. I expect those, too, will be cancelled or postponed.
I am a traveler. Last year I took 16 trips, some by car, some by plane, and a few on small boats. I traveled to NYC, Adirondacks, High Arctic Canada, Greenland, Utah, Oregon coast, Death Valley, Oahu, Sea of Cortez, Monterey. Seattle, San Juan Islands, Great Basin National Park, Las Vegas, Durham, Lake Tahoe, Mammoth, Toronto, London, and Bucharest. I now see that my big journey this year will a journey at home. How will I spend that journey?
I am fortunate to live on 15 wooded acres at 2,800 ft elevation. Although I am only 20 minutes from one of the most populous areas in Northern California, my daily life is isolated. It’s not unusual for me to be at home for 5 or 6 days. But now that I am facing several weeks home, possibly more, I decided to make the most of it.
Today I developed an itinerary for my journey. I found that an itinerary, even if one deviates from it, helps to focus my journey so that I get the most from it. Without one, I fear I would devolve into living in my bathrobe and floundering about the house until the coronavirus has run its course on the planet.
Journey at Home Itinerary: Daily Activities
Workout
Achieve 10,000 steps. I decided to list the steps separately just in case I workout but not as much as I hoped.
Photography
Guitar practice
Penny whistle practice
Website migration work. My website provider, Virb, went out of business this month leaving me without an easy migration path. Now I am manually copying more than a decade of work to my new site, hosted by Wix.
Write something new. I’ll be writing about my Journey at Home everyday until coronavirus is just a memory.
Contact at least one friend or family
Read at least one chapter of a book
Journey at Home Itinerary: Short-term Activities
Study Documentary Traditions. I’m taking an online course through Center for Documentary Studies at Duke U. Just a few more weeks to go.
Tech Trek Volunteer Work. I am reviewing applications from girls who want to attend the AAUW Tech Trek this summer. It’s unclear whether the Tech Trek will go on, but I will assume it is a go unless I hear otherwise.
To help follow this itinerary, I created a checklist to keep track of what I actually do everyday. It may seem like a lot, but without any commute time I am finding there is enough time in the day to complete the activities with a lot of time to spare. I also cook dinner from scratch everyday. But that’s something I did prior to the start of this journey.
Check back to see how my journey progresses. You can use the Contact form if you want to subscribe or tell me about how you are making it through social contact isolation.