I’m not going to lie; it has been a rough year for pretty much everyone throughout the world. As we near the one year anniversary of the surfacing of COVID-19 as we know it, it may be time to reflect on the year we have had and how to make it better.

The holiday season has arrived and, unfortunately, also the flu season. As predicted, much of the world is now contending with second and third waves of the coronavirus, and many countries, including Turkey, are having to apply stricter lockdown regulations once again. While it was shocking to have certain freedoms we took for granted disrupted the first time around, this time the novelty of staying home, many of us all alone, has certainly worn off. However, we have no choice but to continue social distancing at the moment and embracing the partial lockdown measures in the hopes that this will all blow over as suddenly as it arrived.

Many of us had set goals for ourselves to achieve with all of our newfound time at home, but not all of us passed that proverbial test of time. Now we find ourselves back at home with a lot of time, but it’s a lot less fun. Thus, there is no better time than now to rewrite our lockdown goals and make New Year’s resolutions by completing the lockdown bucket list shared by so many all over the globe.

Improve your home

There is absolutely no better time than now to tackle the jobs we have waiting for us at home. Whether it be general maintenance or creating new spaces, beautifying our homes is one of the best things we can do to raise our spirits and positively alter the environment. If you don’t want to add to your home, then why not subtract or alter things to make more room for good energy to flow? This is basically the belief behind Feng Shui, the Chinese practice of geomancy which aims to create harmony between individuals and their surrounding environments through the optimal flow of energy. If minimalizing is where you need to start, then check out Japanese home organization guru Marie Kondo’s books and reality television show to receive her guidelines, which have changed the lives and homes of millions of her fans.

Eat healthily

Achieving our optimal health could not be more important than now, so luckily, staying at home and social distancing sets the stage for the optimal setting in which to do so. There are no more excuses to not eat our fruits and vegetables if we are preparing the majority of our meals at home. Memes all over the world point to the fact that alongside the pandemic came a weight gain epidemic as so many of us chose to ease our concerns with comfort food. Luckily one of the newest trends in dieting that purports weight loss and optimal detox by way of giving our body enough time to digest is the practice of intermittent fasting. The only aspect of your diet that you need to especially curtail in this popular new eating style is simply refraining from taking anything with calories for most of the day. The most common ratio is 16 hours of fasting accompanied by eight hours of eating, though you can easily adjust the timing to what works best for you.

Exercise right

We have definitely learned that being stuck at home is no excuse for not exercising, and the more you move, the better you'll feel. With all of the innovative methods of exercising online, including live pilates, yoga and gym classes, dance parties and more, there is certainly something for everyone at every level of fitness to be physically active. Why not make a conscious effort this time to ditch your stress by working out? For the basics, Joe Wick gained unprecedented popularity with his workout sessions geared toward children and adults, whereas long-term programs such as P90X could be an excellent challenge and opportunity to reach your ideal fitness this winter. The 90-day program developed over two decades ago is an overall fitness system that works out every part of your body with videos that interchange each day.

Learn virtually

While lockdowns may come and go, the efficiency, ease and comfort of taking online courses may be with us for the long haul. Online learning is now so very accessible that we can easily start to learn a new language, art form or skill by simply doing some surfing of the web for the right course. The Masterclass series has revered specialists share the tricks of their skill, the New York Museum of Modern Art is offering online art classes, Babbel is popular for language learning, Domestika offers courses for new hobbies and skills and Udemy is an online learning platform for pretty much for everything, with courses available in many languages.

Catch up on culture

We probably will never have this much downtime again in our lifetime, and thus this is a rare opportunity to finally read and watch everything you ever wanted to but never had the time to. Making a list and checking them off as you go through the books, films and television shows you have always wanted to tackle is a great way to keep track. D&R and Idefix have the largest ranges of books in the country, including those in English and other languages, while content streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime are at your disposal in Turkey.

Make no more excuses and start checking off your bucket list to ensure this pandemic era counts for more than just suffering and detracting from our quality of life. You can start turning that lemon into lemonade today.