Cabin Fever Is Kept At Bay Through Art, Literature, and Meditation

One day looks like another, foggy and rainy, and a sky painted in a muted grey sky.

The need to be outside grows daily, to be sunkissed by the sun, breathe in fresh air, and twirl around with the promise of new growth. Yet, I open the door to wet, grey skies, and even my dogs are not into walking on the muddy ground and being sprayed with the frigid rain.

So what is there to do but escape into my creative mind, far away from this dark, dank transitional month. At the same time as I draw, design, and open emails, I listen to my latest audiobook, "The Last Bookshop in London" by Madeline Martin. This is a fascinating story that takes place during World War II. The main character is a young woman named Grace Bennett. Grace takes a job at a quaint bookshop in London during the Blitz. It wasn't her first choice to work there, but Grace falls under the spell of reading, a love of literature, and how it can give her hope and security during wartime.

Also, I've taken an online poetry course on writing list poems in the past three weeks. Yesterday, I just started another class about how to write Ekphrastic and Surreal poetry. It has been fun since I have never taken the time to dive into this part of writing in a formal setting.

Here is one of them below.

When not writing, I am learning how to grow with the world of digital AI art at Nightcafe Studios. It has been challenging; there is a learning curve, learning how to write words correctly to produce the art I am seeking. I am working on understanding how that works.

My main focus is my print-on-demand site, where I sell my designs. Over the last year, I've gotten into invitation designs with my artwork and now introducing my AI artwork. One area I am currently designing for is Greek Easter.

You might be wondering why Greek Easter. I am part Greek and grew up always celebrating Greek Easter. For years, I was in charge of creating fun Greek Easter invitations for my family, which expanded outside of my personal life and into my Zazzle shop. As I discovered, there was a market for that.

With Greek Easter on May 5th, much later this year, I have given myself enough leeway to get the invitations on the market. Working endlessly on my watercolor, photoshop, and AI art, trying to showcase the traditional Greek Easter delights in a visually appealing way for invitations.

The Easter eggs are painted red as a symbol of Christ's blood and resurrection. There is also a Greek Easter bread called "Tsoureki," with a braided design wrapping around a few red eggs. Along with baklava and Koulouraki cookies, a sweet vanilla butter cookie, my mind is constantly swirling with different positions of the food and what else I can add to make it pop.

An equally important activity that I fit into my day to keep cabin fever at bay is meditation using the "Calm" app. This app has lovely short meditations with wonderful nature sounds that can be an elixir for soul-craving greenery, bird songs, and nature sounds.

As I finish my day, my husband and I sit down with a low-acid recipe dinner. Yes, I am learning how to eat low acid due to my acid reflex issues, and we watch a lot of Apple TV shows; I highly recommend the following:

Lessons In Chemistry

The Master of The Air

Shrinking

The New Look

Hijacked

I look forward to the sky being painted with crystal blue and puffy white clouds, the naked trees holding new buds, and my backyard birds, probably sheltering from the cold rains, coming back out and revisiting our bird feeders. Until then, I had many things to amuse myself to keep the cabin fever suffocating me.

How do you keep yourself busy during the month of March when the weather is gloomy and rainy?

This was originally posted on Medium.