When Helen Ho was laid off from her urban planning job in the spring of 2020, she knew she wouldn’t be looking for another full-time job anytime soon. The pandemic was slowly consuming every bit of our public and private lives, and eradicating many job prospects for the unemployed.

“Even if I wanted to look for a job,” she said, “nobody knew what was going to happen. There was nothing to do.”

Instead, Ms. Ho, 42, took the time to pursue interests she had always wanted to delve into: reiki, a form of energy healing with origins in Japan, and tarot reading.

She soon enrolled in a reiki training course organized by the NYC POC Healing Collective. She studied videos (“Mostly teen girls on Instagram,” she said with a laugh) that taught her how to interpret the 78 cards in the tarot deck she had only ever used as a “party trick.” She also volunteered with a small farm in New Jersey, helping them to start a flower CSA. (This community-supported agriculture project allows people to pay up front for a weekly bunch of flowers and pick them up at several locations in New York City over the six-and-a-half-month season.) While she was consciously giving herself a professional makeover, Ms. Ho didn’t realize it would eventually lead to a design makeover for her apartment, as well.