I'm gonna start off this post by apologizing for adding another quarantine blog/post in the hundreds or thousands already written. I'm sure you must be saturated at this point, but this is my first and last post related to this topic, I promise! I also give you my word that I will try to make this as fun as possible for you (Hint: There are pictures!).

Internet is a fickle, fickle creature. One day your whole Instagram feed is brimming with posts about being productive: "Start that book you always wanted to write!"; "This is workout time! Work on your summer bodies!"; "Bleh, bleh bleh" (Please read this in Drac's voice). And then the next day, being unproductive is aggressively endorsed: "Just breathe!"; "It's okay not to be productive! IT IS OKAY!" First you feel like a dud for not doing anything because it looks like everyone around you is. Then, if you actually start doing something, all you see around is people chilling, and 'just breathing', and you're simply left there thinking, "Make up your minds, y'all!"

Me? I did something else altogether. I took a kind of midway, and said, "Quarantine: New Hobby Time (Please read it as 'quarant-ā-ee-n and not quarant-een and save my rhyme from being wasted, thanks)!" I did a lot of things which I had never done before, and put my sleepy creative side to work. So, in this post, I'm going to bring to you a few fun things which you can try during this positively miserable time and turn down that gloom-o-meter!

1. Photography

Photography is one of the most fun things to do when you're bored. If you have a DSLR, this is the perfect time to explore each and every setting/function/mode that your camera has to offer. I am still a beginner, but I did click a few amazing pictures!

If you have a phone, it's time to move away from just opening the camera app and clicking a picture. Switch to the Manual mode! Play with options like shutter speed, ISO, etc. and delve into the world of phone photography!

I'm not exactly sure if it's visible, but the bottom picture has way less noise than the top one, as I increased the exposure time and decreased the ISO. The clouds are a little blurred because they weren't stable but barring that there are much more finer details in the bottom picture. Now, I cannot provide you with tutorials on how to go about with phone photography because, I am, quite admittedly, not an expert but there is a plethora of tutorial videos on YouTube. So, get clickin' and kickin'!

2. Art

2.1. Drawing/Sketching

I have never been good at drawing, painting, or other fine arts. In school, I always used to get mediocre marks, because since everything revolves around marks in school, Art and Craft was taught like any other subject, with a strict syllabus to be followed, and the classes were more to do with how well you can copy your teacher rather than being creative and coming up with something of your own. But after many years of absolutely zero contact with it, I thought to try my hand at sketching again.

Turns out that without any pressure of maintaining a high standard, so as not to hurt the grades, sketching can be a therapeutic activity! No one demands any kind of perfection from you, and you are free to simply have fun! Although it did take me more tries than I would like to admit to get the face outline right, I genuinely had a ball of a time doing this!

2.2. Doodling

Doodling can range from simple, and minimal looking pieces to quite thoughtful and complex ones. If you're not good at drawing, no worries! Doodles can be as simplified as you want.

You can start off by imitating other works and then gradually work your way to creating your own, original masterpieces!

3. Creating Aesthetic Pictures

3.1 Designing Picture Templates

Sometimes you just need to move away from simple photos and add an elegant or a dramatic element to them. Designing pictures is one way to achieve that! Creating picture templates has now become one of my favorite things to do during this isolation period! It is fun, creative, aesthetically appealing, and a certainly quirky skill to have.

Design posts, stories, cover art, and lots more. All you need is an application and imagination, and design away!

3.2 Photo Editing

The other way to add drama to your pictures is appropriate editing! Good editing can, unquestionably, take your photos to a new level altogether. From blurring to saturating, making it black-and-white to adding light leaks, photo editing is an amusing way to pass your time, and learning something in the process!

Quote from:- Rhinoceros, Eugene Ionesco[/caption]

Instead of always sharing posts of other people, create your own this time!

4. Memes

No, I will absolutely not tell you to sit around and look at memes the whole day, so don't get your hopes up. Sorry to break it to you buddy, but meme-watching does not count as a hobby, and is, most certainly, not an ideal way to pass your time. There is a reason I put this point at the last. I was rather hesitant about including this item in the list because, frankly, I have not made enough progress in this to say that this is one of the things I engage in, but in the end I said, "Oh, well, what does it matter?", and included it anyway. So, I bring to you the fourth and last activity: Meme Making! That's right, folks! It's time to up your meme game! Stop priding yourself over the ability to share the correct meme at the correct time, and make them instead.

Guys, this is a pretty basic meme, so I request you not to judge me. This is just to drive my point home. I have better ideas which will surely materialize in a few days :P!

This concludes my personal list of the things you could try out during these somber days. Explore all these activities for yourself, and who knows, you may end up with a new hobby, or, if we're being optimistic, a new skill! At any rate, you can always try these for revamping your Instagram feed, if nothing else. The best thing about a hobby is that you don't have to be perfect at it. You can be bad at something but still like doing it. And if someone says otherwise, you can always make a meme out of them *wink*! So (don't) get out there, and have some fun!

Pictures copyright:- Apoorva Maheshwari