Illustrated by Lila Ash

Congratulations! Quarantine is about to be lifted in your city. Turns out Trump was right about Easter, just wrong about which year. Here’s what you need to do to get yourself back together before life restarts.

• Shower: Ah, showers – no longer applicable only when toilet paper supplies are dwindling. You may have to take an extra-long one in this last week to get the 8 months of grime off you – eventually, you may even return to showering as frequently as every three days.
• Relearn how to hook your bras: First step is finding your bras – ideally, they’re in the drawer you left them in two years ago. Then try hooking them – it’s actually not that easy – you were too hard on boys in college. 
• Practice words: Specifically, focus on doing them out loud – say “linoleum” to yourself five times fast. Red leather yellow leather red leather yellow leather. You got this!
• Try your clothes on: Or just skip this step. Some things will never return, and there’s no reason pants with a button can’t be one of them.
• Read eight long think-pieces summarizing the effects of this pandemic: You’ve done a good job of tuning out the news, but it’ll still be good to know approximately what happened. You don’t want to be that idiot who didn’t know when LA country lifted its stay-at-home orders. And you definitely don’t want to accidentally drink bleach.

• Take inventory of everything you accomplished in quarantine: In case anybody asks, which hopefully they won’t.

• Start and finish writing the novel you told everyone you were writing: Every great novel begins with 1 word. Unfortunately, it ends with about 60,000 other words. You’re on word 8.
• If you can’t do that (and you can’t), start and finish reading the novel you told everyone you were reading: Make sure you have at least one non-Harry-Potter novel to discuss when you see your friends again. 
• Accomplish truly anything: This can be as simple as counting up all your tweets, just so you know you did create content. 18 contents/day, actually.

• Start a new Google Doc: It can be empty, but just sharing it with 2-19 collaborators counts as an accomplishment.
• Fictionalize some believable accomplishments: Ok, you’ve done nothing, but does anyone need to know? You’re deathly pale – people will believe you donated a lot of blood. Say that.
• Figure out a plan for the rest of your life: You can say you spent quarantine in contemplation – no one can really fact-check this. For example, if you’re a woman in your 30s and you want kids, you should know by 5 years ago.
• Write a To-Do list for your first week post-quarantine: Get a haircut, touch a stranger’s ex, etc. If you don’t know where your life is going and you’ve wasted the last 9 months, you better be ready to come out swinging.
• At least find some inner peace to tell everyone about: If you’ve never meditated for more than 30 seconds, clear your schedule to find a whole minute to do so. You want to come out quarantine with something to show for it, even if it’s just the conviction that comparing yourself to other people is a waste of time.

• Post on social media about how productivity is a myth of the capitalist ethos: We all miss Bernie – take advantage of this. We’re in SURVIVAL mode, not “do literally anything” mode. The people who wrote screenplays – they weren’t paying attention.
• Relax: Your stay-at-home order just got extended another month. You still have time to accomplish everything you said you would.
• Nap: For the next month.