What do you do when you have all the time in the world—but zero motivation to pick yourself up off the sofa? When you’ve gotten to the end of Netflix? When getting dressed and showered before noon is pretty much Nobel-Prize-level ambitious?

Nearly two months into quarantine, and the lethargy and lack of motivation are real. (They’re also, as we should note, a privilege that so many working families, parents, and health professionals don’t have the luxury of.) But for those of us who have never before, in our adult lives, had so much free time and so little to do with it, the question remains: what’s the best way to beat the boredom?

In search of ideas and inspiration, we threw that question out to our subscriber community, The Fervent Few. We wanted to know: have they joined Instagram’s sourdough set? Picked up a musical instrument? Resurrected high-school-era hobbies that had previously fallen by the wayside? Read on for an insight into how our members are spending their days, cellar-guzzling aside—and for tips on forestalling your own quarantine-induced existential dread.

Played in a band back in high school? Make like Ian Davis, who decided to take his guitar skills to the next level during quarantine. “With a transition to working from home I’ve been able to spend more time with a guitar in my hands. After playing for the better part of two decades, I made the decision to start learning music theory,” he says. And his decision paid off. “I’ve probably quadrupled the amount of playing since I started working from home, and I’ve written more new music.” Best of all, Ian has “the passion and desire to start making music with friends like I did years ago—and a hope that, when this all normalizes, I can play in a band on stage for other people.”

Speaking of creative inspiration, Paige Latham Didora opted to use the lockdown period to model herself after America’s favorite felon. “I've rediscovered my desire to basically be Martha Stewart,” she says. “I'm still working full-time so I haven't gone nuts, but I've hung floating shelves, made a Bundt cake, stripped and repainted a bookshelf, sewn a shower curtain, framed old film photographs, propagated houseplants, made about four pizzas, and planned my raised garden bed. I'm about to tear up some carpeting tonight. Also cigars. I love cigars. I wonder if Martha Stewart likes cigars …”

Like Paige, Mathias Möller has indulged a new yen for baking, despite the cleared-out baking aisle at his local grocery store. “For the first weeks of the lockdown over here, flour and yeast were always sold out, and I was wondering how everybody suddenly turned into a baker. (Admittedly, I wondered if half of the people would even know what they were doing, but maybe I’m just an arrogant bastard.) However, this reassured me that, with my cooking and baking skills, I would do fine in quarantine, and be able to stay sane. Now, the kitchen has become even more of a communal space for our little household of two, since we are separated in our respective home offices for most of the day. Cooking and chatting about how our day was has become a nice routine—one that I never cherished that much in the past.”

But indulging an artistic or culinary flair isn’t the only way to pass the time in lockdown. Instead, Daniel Castro Chin has been channeling his inner Bryan Roth, and turning to numbers to cope. “I am a big fan of numbers, so I am intrigued to be living through what's setting up to be my first recession as an adult (I was in high school in Panama for 2008). The economy is a peculiar place to go for comfort, but a small part of me needed to look away from every number being so negative. As an outsider looking in, I feel like a scientist looking at an experiment, and getting live data as the world reacts to something it has never quite faced before. I’ll definitely look back at 2020 charts long after this is said and done, just to remember this period of dystopia—but also because we'll likely see the impact of this for years to come.”

For those who are lucky enough to have access to the great outdoors, getting active has been a quarantine lifeline. Skateboarding has become Samer Khudairi’s preferred form of exercise and boredom-slaying. “I started skateboarding a bit more—I’m trying to relearn to kickflip,” he says. But for Samer, the hobby also goes deeper. “As an early teen, both my parents worked, and my local skate shop became a safe space. I would hang out there, watch skate films, and learn from older people about retail, fashion, graffiti, hip hop, metal, urban design—the list goes on. Everything about my identity now seems to be rooted in skateboarding (even beer—at the time, those employees were brown-bagging 40s of malt liquor). Things are different now of course, but it was nice to follow that route back via four rolling wheels.”

As if skateboarding weren’t extreme enough, Cy Whitling has been making dirt jumps. “In the first week of lockdown, I lost about half of my work and suddenly had a bunch of free time. At the same time, I was being constantly inundated on social media about how awesome this time would be for my creativity, and how we should be productive and make art. And I just didn't feel it at all. So I took my shovel down to the vacant lot a few blocks from home and started touching up the dirt jumps there. Since then, I've probably put 70 hours into building new lines and shoveling snow. It allows me to zone out and de-stress, to just focus on moving dirt. And now it's been really cool to see more local kids show up when their online school is over for the day and help dig and ride—all while keeping six feet apart.”

Meanwhile, Lana Svitankova has found a more gentle way to relax in the open air. “Every day, if the weather permits, I go outside to my small patio to have a cup of coffee and listen to any beer-related podcast available. These 30 or 40 minutes are slowly becoming a very pleasant routine: I turn off all distractions, sit in the sun, get my vitamin D and some new knowledge, and don't think of anything negative, which is quite a nice alternative.” But that’s not all. “I've also gotten a bit further into fermenting,” she says. “I feed a sourdough starter (with some beer dregs—forgive me, sourdough purists), I packed my first jar of kimchi a few days ago, and a few batches of kvass are in the works. But what I'm diving into the deepest is translation. It keeps my brain occupied, and I hope it will even be of some use in the future—and that there will be more beer books in Ukrainian.”

Speaking of getting outdoors (and fermentation), Amy has rediscovered several pastoral personal hobbies. “In lieu of visiting breweries, two hobbies of mine that have been rekindled during quarantine are gardening and foraging. It’s been great growing up seedlings of vegetables and herbs that will someday be used in future meals. I’ve already had success with microgreens, which were the perfect topping for a recent pad Thai dish, as well as a homemade pizza. In terms of foraging, I am very fortunate to have a large forest directly behind my apartment. My partner Chris and I have been going on hikes regularly, and recently discovered that the forest is rich with ramp patches, which we’ve also used for cooking.”

Beyond dinner plans, Amy’s foraging is even contributing to her homebrewing. “The coolest bit of foraging I’ve done is for wild yeast. I also gathered pinecones, white pine needles, apple buds, dandelions, and red maple bark. I’m growing the yeast up in a malt extract solution, and whichever one is the most active I will use in my homebrew.”

If you can muster the energy, hobbies can be a lifeline, and a reliable way to beat boredom and malaise—particularly since, while some areas of the world are starting to open back up, just as many are going to be shut down for a while longer. Find a new avenue of experimentation, and don’t forget to join The Fervent Few to let us know what you’ve been up to.