Notes from quarantine: focus on what you can control

I can’t say I’m exactly enjoying being in quarantine after returning to Taiwan from a trip to the UK. But at least my hotel room for the next couple of weeks is just about large enough to swing a cat in and the friendly staff are doing their best to make my stay as bearable as possible under the circumstances. The food that has been deposited outside my door has been decent so far, not to mention reasonably varied. Let’s see how I feel about it at the same time next week! It’s early days yet.

I have quickly come to the conclusion that the key to retaining my sanity during quarantine is to focus on what I can control rather than obsess about not being able to leave my room. One of my priorities is to make sure that I carry out daily reps using the set of dumbbells I brought with me and make intermittent walks one from one end of the room to the other. The scenery doesn’t quite match that of the Four Beasts, my usual hiking haunt in Taipei, but I’m managing to keep myself entertained by listening the excellent audiobook version of Ask Your Developer. Three days in, I’ve managed to maintain an average of 15,000 steps.

Naturally, I also have my day job to do and thanks to the magic of Microsoft Teams I’m able to remain in close touch with my colleagues at our tantalizingly close Xindian office. A good thing, too, because we have a lot of exciting things happening right now at VIA that I plan to write about in future updates.

I have plenty to keep myself occupied with, in other words, until the day I can finally step outside my room and return to normal life.