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Sunday 15 March 2020

Keeping Calm

I'm finding the news and the uncertainty a little stressful at the moment. Actually, it's a lot stressful. I could witter on about this or that, but instead I'm trying to be positive and I thought I'd share a few of the places online that I will be dipping into if I run out of things to do.

If you like quizzes, I've been a member of Sporcle for years, and I have enjoyed quite a few hours dipping into the different quizzes and challenges. I recommend the 'Bad Dad Jokes' quizzes if you feel like cheering yourself up.

If you want to go further with self improvement, Open Learn has several free courses, and there is always Duolingo. One day I will pick up the French again there.

If it's general reading, there are plenty of free books on Amazon kindle, although not all are worth that. There are a lot of free classics on there, like Pride and Prejudice, and Dracula. You can get a free app for your phone to read a kindle book, or a kindle reading app for your laptop or PC if you haven't got a kindle.

You may also like to go along to Project Gutenberg where you can find a vast array of free books. They are out of copyright, so you don't have the latest thriller, but you can dip into books by Jules Verne and Mark Twain. I clicked on their top 100 here, and includes 'Journal of a Plague Year' by Daniel Defoe which seems remarkably apt.

YouTube is incredibly useful. If necessary, you can distract yourself with funny cat videos, but if you continue with the literary theme there is the librivox collection, where you can listen to a book being read (list here). I listened to part of Children of the Abyss by Jack London as part of my research for the next book, and it terrified the life out of me - an eye witness account of the London slums around 1900. It also has such gems as 100 Proofs that the Earth is not a Globe, by William Carpenter, and Memoirs of a Workhouse Medical Officer, but I plan to dip into the Edgar Alan Poe and the Victorian Ghost stories.

YouTube has a lot of good fun on it, including crafts and knitting patterns. If you have a yarn stash, then most yarn sites have some free patterns on, but I have had some good results from Yarnspirations with plenty of free patterns, and there is always Ravelry.

I'll put up some more if I find them, and if anyone wants to share good sites then please comment and I'll copy them to the next post.

Hugs to all.

2 comments:

  1. I am trying not to get too stressed by the news, but, it is stressful, isn't it? Thank you for posting the various links to things to do to feel less stressed.

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  2. I've started avoiding watching too much news. I think the news is making things worse. People are going crazy buying out food and toilet paper (not sure why on that count lol). I'm trying to be sensible about the whole thing. Luckily (?) I'm a bit of an introvert so I'm not around a whole lot of people. I don't like crowds and I don't usually end up in them. All the schools here are cancelled and shops are closing early each day.

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