Self-isolation: my March round-up

I’m on approximately day 21 of self-isolation, and it’s flying by, actually. Is that the days blurring, the lack of contact with other human beings apart from my quarantine buddy, or do the years really start flying by once you turn 30? Let’s do a self-isolation round-up to say goodbye to March!

It may have been 21 days already, but I’m not bored yet. How could I be bored with the internet, TV and infinite cat cuddles? Sure, I miss my family and friends awfully, and I don’t want to be put into quarantine again any time soon after this, but bored? No.

Here’s a roundup of things I’ve been doing to keep the boredom at bay for the month of March.

I’ve been re-watching Gossip Girl

What began as a whistful wish to visit New York without having to move from my sofa and a re-watch where I knew exactly who Gossip Girl was, to see if I should have been able to guess the first time round, ended with me leaving the damn thing to run through its 6 seasons whilst I get on with other things. This show is dumb, but addictive.

What’s worse, is that on finding me watching GG one evening, R asked me what the heck I was up to, and I told him – I literally said out loud – that I was re-watching a show from my childhood. My Childhood. Gossip Girl aired from 2007 until 2012. It doesn’t take a mastermind to discover that I was 17 – 22 during those years. Yet I seemed to forget it entirely. Gossip Girl is not a television show from my childhood at all. I literally entered my twenties watching it, and that, my friends, left me dumfounded.

Anyway, before you all abandon me for my shocking taste in television, I would just like to point out that the only reason I can’t look away from the screen anymore is due to every character’s complete lack of responsibility, self-awareness, and their complete ignorance of ‘the real world’. It’s like multiple car crashes happening at once.

They’re all as bad as each other too! Blair Waldorf is obviously the leading lady, sorry, baby of the whole melodrama, but every character (even the ‘good’ ones) have many, many, many flaws. They make incredibly obvious and dumb mistakes over and over again, to the point of exhaustion (in me, not even in them), and nobody learns a thing.

I actually despise this show. Don’t re-watch it.

I’ve had two Netflix parties

Not being able to see my friends sucks, but thanks to Netflix, I’m still able to watch shows with them and have a cheeky chat on the sidebar, and I don’t have to share my snacks. Thank God.

Since self-isolation began, I’ve had 2 Netflix parties, and (literally by coincidence) watched two Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedies.

The first wassssss Baby Mama, a film brought out in 2008 which takes a comedic look into surrogacy, and was, in fact, incredibly funny given the topic.

Our second pick was Wine Country, a 2019 attempt to show a group of women hitting their 50s out for a birthday weekend, and in turn making all 50+ers sound like complete knob-heads. Although the film started off pretty funny, it went downhill quickly, and I definitely would not recommend any other human being watching it.

I watched the Tiger King documentary

I mean, find me someone who hasn’t, am I right?

(Apart from Gossip Girl), I’ve never watched a show that portrayed car crash after car crash. I’ve never been more stunned or equally as confused as to what’s going on, and I’ve never been so wowed at the length human beings can go to.

Tiger King is a documentary on Netflix that tells the story of Joe Exotic, a guy with a triumphant, peroxided mullet, and a bunch of tigers that turned him into a millionaire. It’s also about Carole Baskin, Exotic’s arch nemesis, and let me tell you, whilst you may think that she’s ‘cuckoo but probably harmless’ in episode 1, just you wait until you’ve binge watched the entire 7 episodes, and then we can chat.

I read Oryx & Crake

For my 30th birthday I was gifted a Kobo e-reader from my lovely stepmum and dad. It’s the perfect gift for me really. I’m an avid reader and keeping all my books on one device is perfect for travel.

The first book I downloaded was Oryx & Crake, by Margaret Atwood. I’ve been dying to read more of her work since finally getting my hands on The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments and practically inhaling them in one sitting. She’s got a perfect way with words and her stories are captivating and incredibly descriptive, so this was a no-brainer for me.

This book is incredible, and I’d recommend it to everyone. It’s a dystopian (‘speculative fiction’) novel set in a world where genetic engineering has taken over, and is told by (seemingly) the last natural human on earth. Snowman, said last natural human, is struggling to survive amongst the pure, new breed of human that now roams free. Adventure (and spoilers) ensue.

I’m yet to download The Year of the Flood and MaddAddam, which are the following books in the trilogy, but it’s high up on my self-isolation to-do list, and will certainly be appearing in a future post.

I got my hands on Snap, another book on my list

I don’t read Dutch fiction. But I do read Dutch non-fiction that’s not yet been translated into English.

One of my hopes post-quarantine, is to take more photographs. I don’t want to become a photographer or anything, but I do, if you see what I’m saying. I want to understand photography as a whole, because now I just snap away at practically anything. My photographs have no style or substance, and I want to change that.

Anki Wijnen’s book, Snap, has been on my radar since pre-apocolypse days where I’d wander through bookstores for fun (where are my fellow bookstore wanders at?!). I’d pick up Snap, or her previous book Shoot, and long for the days when my Dutch would be good enough to give it a shot (see what I did there?). Well, self-isolation Simone stopped giving a damn, asked R for it for her birthday, and is currently reading it, and guess what – I’ve only had to Google translate like 6 words so far. That’s a win in my eyes!

So far I’ve learnt a few things I already knew, and a few things I can put into practice, so I guess brace yourself for a new direction when I decide to start posting on Instagram again!

What about you?

What about you? How have you been getting on during self-isolation? Are you doing ok? Let me know in the comments!

If you’re getting itchy feet, and miss traveling, why not check out my previous post, all about things you can do in self-isolation to try and beat the travel bug for the time being. Whatever you do, stay in and stay safe, and don’t forget that the internet can quell *almost* any symptoms of boredom.

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