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Mar 27, 2020 By Dustin Krcatovich COVID-19 Quarantine Playlists

As most of us are understandably stuck inside for the foreseeable future due to the necessary COVID-19 quarantine, we’ve asked our writers to put together Spotify playlists to help us all pass the time. Some will be mixes of music they are currently listening to as a means of getting them through the crisis, others will be centered on a particular theme, scene, genre, or decade. With each one we’ve asked the writer to also submit a photo showing some aspect of their quarantine life, be it their home office desk, hanging with their kids who are off school, or something else. Here is a COVID-19 quarantine playlist from our writer Dustin Krcatovich, accompanied by a picture of his cat.

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It’s been so nice outside here in Portland, and that makes it hard to stay inside. Whenever I creep over to Woodlawn Park, though, I regret it: people who would normally be at work are crowding the place, freaking me out. I tried to bring a book to read the other day (In the Mirror of the Past: Lectures and Addresses 1978-1990 by Ivan Illich, if you’re wondering), but then it hit me: just where was I supposed to SIT?

Maybe some of you who are used to being germaphobes aren’t as put off by this, but for me it’s a major adjustment. Though I’m someone who is perpetually riddled with anxiety about many things, illness was never really one of them. To date, I’ve enjoyed a life of touching public handrails with impunity and sleeping on strangers’ couches; were I to find a hair in some food at a restaurant, I’d throw it on the floor, wipe my fingers on my napkin, and shrug it off. Who cares? You get sick, you get well, life goes on.

Does it, though? I was ready to take this same attitude with COVID-19 and, as evidenced by this playlist, I still have to make myself laugh it off a little to keep going. In reality, though, it’s no laughing matter. Life is changing dramatically, and virtually overnight. It lends everything that came before a haunting shadow.

For what it’s worth, my freelance routine is the one thing that hasn’t much changed. I sit on the couch with the cat, I listen/watch, and I type. Sometimes I seize Micah’s standing desk for a bit to give my poor back a break. I try to stay focused on the work. It doesn’t always happen.

Follow Dustin on Twitter at @Real_Krcatovich.

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