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  • Pandemic season.

  • This is not the first,

  • nor will it be the last time,

  • you lock yourself down and we isolate from each other

  • to protect ourselves

  • and to protect those more vulnerable than ourselves.

  • The practical effect of this isolation on you

  • is that your home is no longer your home,

  • but has transformed into a vessel that,

  • along with many others,

  • has left Earth to orbit around her.

  • Alone, together.

  • Those remaining on Earth have their mission,

  • to mitigate the dangers of the outside.

  • And while here inside,

  • it may seem like you have naught to do but watch and wait,

  • aboard this ship,

  • isolated for a season with length unknown,

  • there are dangers too.

  • What can start as a break from life, will, unchecked,

  • become something much worse.

  • Darkness and disorder and a slow drift into abyss,

  • where, out here, no one can physically help you.

  • So, you cannot just wait.

  • Like those below, you above have things to do.

  • Eventually Earth will need people to return,

  • to help spin back up the wheels of the human world.

  • Your mission: return better than you left.

  • To accomplish this, you must maintain the vessel.

  • Welcome aboard Spaceship You.

  • The core generator of Spaceship You is your health,

  • with two parts: the physical and the mental.

  • For the ship to stay functional, this generator must spin.

  • Arriving in orbit, it starts with some momentum

  • to keep things going at first,

  • to afford a little time to adjust.

  • But as with all motion,

  • the passive forces of the universe work to slow that which is active,

  • to bring darkness and disorder.

  • If the core slows too much,

  • if it all drifts too far and becomes too dark,

  • recovery on your own is increasingly unlikely.

  • So, how to prime the core, and keep it running during this journey.

  • The mental and physical are halves of a whole,

  • so accelerating one accelerates the other.

  • Each adds to the total momentum,

  • making additional pushing easier, priming the core,

  • creating motion, making light and order.

  • While you could start with either side,

  • if the core is low, prime with the physical half.

  • It has sturdier grips.

  • The mental half,

  • while vital for the higher operations of the ship,

  • is a slipperier place to start.

  • You are on your own.

  • Your brain and how it thinks are all you have.

  • And brains, when dangerously apathetic or agitated,

  • usually can't just think themselves better.

  • Brains are complicated messes,

  • but physical activity is simple and brings brains back to baseline.

  • When the ship is in trouble, prime with the physical.

  • OK, now what?

  • Back in the before time,

  • you may not have noticed how much

  • your physical environment determined what you did.

  • The library helped you study.

  • The office helped you work.

  • The vacation helped you relax.

  • The couch helped you… couch.

  • Then, as now, getting yourself to the right physical space

  • at the right time is a big part of the job of existing.

  • Yet, here you are, in one all-room.

  • Thus, the first task is to divide your physical space.

  • No matter how small your vessel,

  • there will be at least four sides

  • to create four vital stations to operate the ship.

  • The first is for exercise.

  • Something… beyond the bare minimum to survive.

  • So that priming the core is easier when you need to.

  • Create this simplest station first.

  • It doesn't need to be big.

  • It doesn't need equipment to start.

  • It just needs to be empty.

  • Your communicator contains more than enough

  • body weight exercises you can start today.

  • From this point on,

  • crossing this border is how you mentally

  • and physically decide to do the exercise.

  • Now, depending on the kind of person you are,

  • exercise will feel like bitter medicine at first,

  • speaking from deep experience here.

  • But you are on a solo mission in space.

  • The generator your life depends on requires physical effort to operate.

  • Exercise is non-optional.

  • While Spaceship You is isolated,

  • there are resupplies available.

  • A small amount of equipment, after decontamination,

  • can make a big difference.

  • If your ship is lucky enough to have access to a biosphere,

  • be sure to use that as well.

  • Your exercise station is a vital part of returning better than before,

  • whatever else might happen on this journey.

  • The next station to create is sleep.

  • Unlike exercise, it's not simple to just lie down

  • and one, two, three… [fingers snap] …sleep.

  • So to help this process you create and respect, even sanctify,

  • the sleep station boundaries as where you go to sleep only.

  • If you use the sleep station to keep up with social media,

  • or watch stuff, or eat, or all at once,

  • you degrade the station.

  • Degrade your ability to sleep.

  • Degrade mission success.

  • Maintaining hygiene out here is important.

  • And the hygiene of the stations is part of that.

  • With sleep hygiene often the most difficult.

  • Even if you respect the area, your brain may chatter away, not cooperating.

  • You can distract it with a sleepy novel.

  • Or maybe a sleepy listen.

  • But if it does not yield within thirty minutes, leave.

  • Try again later.

  • This is where you go to sleep, not to linger,

  • worrying about how you can't.

  • It will be hard at first.

  • But like exercise, the more you do only the sanctified activity

  • within the sanctified borders,

  • the more the sanctified station can help you

  • accomplish what you want.

  • And you must get a handle on sleep.

  • Without the constraints of Earth,

  • you will drift into a random sleep schedule.

  • Which will make it harder to sleep.

  • Which drains the core.

  • Which makes everything else harder.

  • Keep your sleep connected to Earth with an alarm for getting up.

  • Again, bitter medicine.

  • But, out here, you must create your own structure

  • to accomplish the mission.

  • And you can set the alarm for whatever feels right.

  • It is the consistent waking time that matters.

  • That acts as the psychological anchor point across the coming days.

  • Your mission clock now has a start time, with sleep and exercise.

  • But that leaves a lot of open hours.

  • What to do?

  • Well, you're probably watching this from your default station: couch,

  • which comes pre-installed on all vessels.

  • It's pretty comfy,

  • and NetMeTube+ does have a tetra-trillion hours of streaming video,

  • much of which is amazing.

  • And you do have a lot of time.

  • [with emphasis] But, but...

  • You will, burn through the list of things you truly enjoy surprisingly fast.

  • The stream of streaming looks infinite, but it isn't.

  • And getting to the effective end of things worth watching

  • is a mixed achievement get.

  • You'll then have stuff just on, half watching,

  • slumping down, not really paying attention.

  • Perhaps along with some games

  • that can easily eat into the hours

  • and hide the current state of the core.

  • Such that you don't notice until too late, you've started to drift.

  • Couch contains twin dangers.

  • This lapse into lethargy,

  • along with the amping of anxiety.

  • When things are bad on Earth

  • it's natural to want to follow every development, every detail,

  • which can descend into a self-irradiation with novel anxieties

  • and angers over that which you can not affect.

  • This unactionable agitation de-baselines the brain and drains the core.

  • Look around you.

  • This is your actionable environment.

  • So, take action from couch.

  • Tidy it and sanctify the boundaries of a new recreation station

  • where you will engage with entertainment you enjoy,