I have a feeling the hygge-ers, the binge-watchers, and the cocooners (speaking) are going to make it through the pandemic with a lot more sanity than the social butterflies, the “people” people, the oxytocin junkies, the herdies (who can’t go anywhere or do anything unless accompanied by one or more friends), those who have been helicoptered to the point that they don’t know how to occupy themselves, and those poor folks who have a deep-seated need to have their existence independently verified by somebody else to the point of panic at the thought of being alone.
We have lost the art of solitude, and it is an art. We don’t know how to be 
still anymore. Some of us have forgotten how to take the mind out of gear and just let it coast; some of us either don’t know how or, worse, are totally unaware that it can be done. Apparently, there is a widespread myth that there is a lot of thinking involved in it. To understand solitude is to understand the difference between fishing and catching fish. Sometimes you sits and thinks, and sometimes you just sits.
There is a certain zen state that happens when the hands are busy with a repetitive task, the sort of task where your body is doing something and your eyes are keeping an eye on it, but the part of your brain that balances checkbooks and reads recipes, and decides you’d better take an umbrella is not needed for the task at hand. It’s been called “being in the moment.” It’s a neat trick if you can do it.
So now that you’ve got more “me-time” than you know what to do with it, here are a few suggestions:
Project Gutenburg offers free downloads of books no longer under copyright. The downloads are available in several different formats for the various e-reader platforms. The Kindle app (which uses .mobi format) is free.
Seat 14C and Avatars, Inc. are two websites that offer free bespoke SciFi anthologies.
Go to Amazon Kindle and type in “free Kindle books.” There are more than you might think. Be adventurous. Try this one with this fantasy cast.
Learn how to do something by hand. That’s why God gave us YouTube.
For that matter, there’s a lot of goodies from British TV on YouTube– twenty seasons’ worth of “Time Team,” or David Suchet playing the title role in several Agatha Christie “Hercule Poirot“dramatizations, or the above mentioned Jeeves and Wooster with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, or a bunch of David Starkey historical documentaries, Michael Wood documentaries and Lucy Worsley documentaries. There’s all kinds of amazing stuff down the YouTube rabbit hole.
Jigsaw Planet is a free-to-join free-to-use website that allows you to upload pictures (.jpeg, .png formats) and turn them into jigsaw puzzles. You can customize the number and shape of the pieces. You have the option of letting others work your puzzles, just as others can opt to let you work theirs. This website works best on a laptop or PC with a decent sized monitor screen, or, ideally, a smart TV that lets you bluetooth a keyboard and mouse, and can access a web browser.
If you are a knitter or crocheter and have never been on Ravelry, it’s free to join and use, and boy, are you in for a treat! Lots of free patterns for everything.
If you’re desperate for something to read, try this.
The Owl Underground 