Stop Doom Scrolling and Find Peace Through Cooking In This Video Game
The therapeutic effects of post-pandemic meal-prepping
The TV plays a live recording of existential dread; 24-hour coronavirus coverage plays as my partner and I take part in what we call our “doom-scroll” of Twitter. It’s an angsty routine. There are only a few moments of the day when our anxiety ebbs — when we cook and eat, and when we play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. We bought the video game three weeks before France went under lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus infections. At that time, we had no idea that this open-world adventure, released in 2017 for the Nintendo Switch, would become the only pleasant escape from our one-bedroom apartment.
I’m a fast-food worker. Well, I was. I learned of my workplace’s indefinite closure via Facebook. The one downside — as trivial as it may sound — is that I can no longer bring food home after a shift. Meals before quarantine involved a lot of food from my partner’s workplace (she could bring healthy meals home), some from mine, and the food we’d make together. But cooking takes on a new meaning in Breath of the Wild.
As you fight monsters in the picturesque green fields of Hyrule, the Zelda franchise’s kingdom, you realize quickly that in that world, as in ours, meal prep is…
