“Mindemic” by Doryan Algarra
Artwork thoughts and inspirations
For this week’s artwork, called “Mindemic”, I created as a visual representation of what I feel we are all going through during this COVID-19 pandemic. It’s my take on how an event like this affects us mentally.
At LifeOmic and broadly, we talk a lot about mindfulness and mental health in regards to being conscious of your emotional, psychological and social well-being. And when something like this occurs to our society at this scale, it starts to affect that very well-being.
This piece is a way to remind us to look at these issues holistically and use things like knowledge, science and reason to hopefully counteract some of the mental effects of an experience like this, including fear and anxiety..
There is a lot going on around us, a lot of information and misinformation. Hopefully we as whole can focus on what’s important and stay informed as we see our way through this time.
My personal tips for mental health during this time:
- Put your phone down. There’s a lot of information and misinformation out there – limiting your exposure could help ease anxiety. By all means stay informed, just be aware of how much information you’re taking in (especially from social media) and whether it’s benefitting you or just freaking you out.
- Move around. Now that most people are self-quarantining, its a great time to get the ball rolling on getting in shape. It’s also just a good distraction from the noise and can make you feel clearer. Try to move around in your home, around your yard or in a nature space where you still maintaining social distance from others, to limit the spread of COVID-19.
- Do whatever you’ve been putting off. For me, my downtime is always drawing, but if there’s something you enjoy doing that you normally don’t make time for, try it now.
- Video call family and friends. Sure, you’ll talk about the coronavirus, but try and steer the conversation into things outside of that. It’s amazing how a good conversation can put you in a good mindset.
- The obligatory binge-watching. Obviously most of us will be watching Netflix, but you should do it without any guilt whatsoever – use this time to mentally escape.
Do you have novel coronavirus related artwork that you’d like to share with our community? E-mail it to us at lifeology@lifeomic.com or drop it in our #coronavirus-art Slack channel – join our Slack workspace here.
