Items

• 2020-11-25

  My Bed

  I never imagined spending the end of my high school senior year in bed. I always expected and looked forward to the social gatherings, late nights with friends, prom, graduation, spending time with my class, all the things you see on TV. Instead, the class of 2020 and the rest of the world switched to online learning/work, hand sanitizer, masks, and social distancing, along with the constant fear of the COVID-19 virus. Cases rose, along with time at home and persistent anxieties. Will I get it? What if I spread it to my parents? Or worse, my grandparents? School stopped. Work stopped. My family stayed home, isolated. Due to the complete halt of social interaction, and nothing else to do, I ended up spending too much time alone in my bed. My bed, like many teenagers, has always been one of my favorite places and most frequent visitation. But how much time in bed is too much? Due to COVID time, my bed transformed from being a place I slept and left every day, to a type of addiction. A place I was bound to and could not escape. There were some positives to being in my bed during these unprecedented times. At first, spending time in my bed was nice, I got more sleep than in the normal school year, and I got to relax during the day. My bed before COVID had always been a place for me after school or work to go and be alone. It’s a warm inviting space where I don’t have to impress society or anyone. It is like an oasis, with comfy blankets and pillows, lit candles around. I like to bring my cat into my room after a hard day and cuddle in bed with her if she allows it. Although my relationship with my bed changed during COVID, my relationship with the rest of my family did not. On a positive note, my bed and other beds in my house became gathering spaces. A joy of lockdown was that my older sister came home and stayed with us for two months. One of our favorite things to do together is to watch movies and tv shows with my mom too. My bed became a space for all of us to be together and watch movies and chit chat. We would all be so happy that we were all reunited again. Because we never expected this to happen. Once hours without school turned from weeks to months, time in my bed increased way more than usual. I had way too much time to spend in bed, and nothing to do in the outside world. My bed had once been a place for me to go when I craved alone time. But once I had nowhere but my house to be, my bed became the only place I spent time. I laid there for hours on my phone lazily. During my time in bed, I felt lazy and bored. I was unproductive and unmotivated. I wanted to go to places with people. I started to hate my bed, and hate what I had become because of my bed. At one point it got so bad that I was spending so much time lying in bed that my back started having problems from slouching so much. Strange right? That really was a sign for me to get off my butt and do something. I changed my attitude and realized I had to get out of bed and go outside. When the weather got warmer and sunnier, I was finally able and wanted to leave my room and go spend time outside. This allowed me to feel the fresh air and feel productive outside in the real world. Being able to leave my bed and return to it later in the day, made my bed rewarding again, instead of never leaving and being mad at myself and the bed for drawing me in. A bed is meant to be somewhere to sleep. But for me, during the pandemic, it was a place to relax, read, socialize, be warm, watch tv, even eat. However, because of its spell on me, I needed to learn to interact with my bed with caution and moderation, for my sanity. Like anything during these COVID times, my bed and I had good experiences and bad experiences. I had to learn how I needed to cope with my emotions concerning my bed. Before COVID, my bed was a place for me to unwind and feel better. But during the lockdown, I realized that my relationship with other people was better for my mental health, over spending time in bed. Overall, it provided me a safe space to rekindle my energy. But because of the circumstances, it might have been too much. It inhibited me from leaving it like I was tied and stuck. But it also made me grateful. To feel comfortable and safe in my room away from the uncertainty of current times.
• 
  2020-12-01

  Growth in Quarantine

  The week before the national quarantine guidelines were announced, I was on a choir trip to the Southern Division ACDA competition in Alabama. This trip was the beginning of my final high school plans, the beginning of the end. I was expecting to come home and tell my friends all about it, to plan for my next choir trip to New York City in a few short weeks, to soak up my last moments of high school, and, of course, to finally walk across the stage and graduate. It is kind of ironic that I was dreading the spotlight on me when I was handed my diploma and doing the awkward tassel flip, but now I wish I could have anything close to that experience. When I left that day for Alabama, I did not expect to never see a majority of those people from school ever again. The feelings of hopelessness and of worthlessness were shared among many globally, including myself, leaving me in a state of prolonged stagnance. Immediately after I got off the bus home from Alabama, I was sent on a train to my dad’s new house in rural upstate New York. I did not get to go home and get my things or say hi to my family. The next few months of my life consisted of my duffel bag packed for one week, random Amazon orders, and an endless forest. At first, I still had school to keep me occupied and feel normal, but eventually, that ended and I had nothing to fill up the days. My dad was barely home, as he had just started a new job, and there was no other human within several miles, not that I could talk to them anyway, but the thought would have been nice. I was completely isolated. I tried painting, baking, video games, and dying my hair, but nothing filled the emptiness I was feeling. I felt extremely unproductive, like I was just wasting away where no one could find me. Eventually, I decided to take advantage of the nothingness surrounding me. I ventured into the woods and saw a whole world that kept continuing amidst the pandemic. I was reminded that life kept going, and while it seemed like mine was completely frozen, that it would start up again one day. I started spending more and more time in the woods, watching saplings develop, the fawns growing older, and the stream carve its way through the rough earth. In order to keep a piece of that life closer to home, I created biospheres in glass jars so that I could feel the hope for life when I didn’t want to go outside. Through those months, I did a lot of reflection on the pandemic and what it meant for myself and others. I realized that my life will continue, I will continue to live one day, but some people will not if we are not in isolation, so suddenly all the pain of the things I missed was worth it. Eventually, I had to leave New York and come to Washington. I moved into my mom’s two bedroom apartment shared by her boyfriend and my little brother a few months prior to school starting. I began to experience those same things I did when in New York at first, but the difference was that here, I did not have a vast forest to walk into. I had approximately 1,200 square feet and a shared bedroom with a five year old boy to wander around. I had to learn to cope all over again. I turned to one of my favorite things, even before the pandemic: plants. A simple succulent now carried so much more weight than before, reminding me of life, similar to the forest in New York. I have since expanded my plant collection in my dorm room, reminding myself everyday that even when it doesn’t feel like it, I am continuing to grow and one day life will be back to normal. Once the pandemic ends, I will continue to care for and expand my collection of plants. I think that one day it will be cool to show people my “pandemic plants.” It will be a symbol of my growth through quarantine, a symbol that I made it. I never thought that something so simple would make such a big difference in my life. Everyone lost something during this time, but I believe everyone gained something too, and I gained some very valuable life lessons and insight. While the pandemic is still blazing forward and so many things are changing, I will try my best to stay inspired by life and inspire those around me as well.
• 
  2020-08-10

  Seeing the Shades

  It is human nature to ignore somethings over others through the application of selective attention. According to human psychology, we tend to focus on information that we think matters more while ignoring the presumed irrelevant details. The same applies to colors. They are flamboyant, bringing out the best, most salient parts of objects. However, they are merely as alluring without the shades, the easily ignored parts that make objects pop. If you were to ask me before the pandemic COVID-19, what the utensil that produces shades means to me, I’d probably tell you schoolwork. It means working on an assignment in Spanish class, drafting an artwork for art class. It’s something that blends into my life, something so easily accessible that I had ignored. COVID-19 inspired me to expand my selective attention, giving me an opportunity to deal with my personal crisis. It allowed me to realize the importance of shades. Pencils are typical. They have long and narrow bodies, a burgundy pinkish eraser on the top, and a greyish carbon tip. It’s everywhere, in school, stores, houses…So obtainable that people tend to disregard its essentiality. Before the COVID crisis, I use a pencil mostly under instructions: “use a pencil to darken circles for this section”, “please use a pencil to do the annotations”, “always draft your artwork with a pencil”. It had been an object that I associate with obligations and restraints. I enjoy socializing and being in crowded locations. Deep down, I know that spending time with others provides me an excuse to not face “me”. Being accompanied by technology since my early childhood, it’s easy to feel lost and hollow when I’m idling around; when I’m truly alone with myself. I didn’t like being with myself because I know I would overthink. So, I used to go out whenever I could. It is a personal crisis that I have avoided and procrastinated on fixing. Coincidentally, the pandemic happened, and I was forced to quarantine in my house, with me. As a member of Generation Z, I spent most of the first two months immersed in technology: Tik Tok, Instagram, and YouTube. I used all my time absorbing useless information online, to fill the emptiness I feel from lack of social stimuli. Until one day when I was spacing out at my desk, thinking which information dump to go to next, I noticed my pencil lying on the table. I picked it up, with nothing in mind, I started scribbling on a piece of paper. The products are in all forms, intersecting with each other but not showing any outline of specific objects. They are abstracts piled together. It struck me as I realized the freeing side of pencil. When you press it on to the paper lightly, the shade that comes out is lighter, and vice versa. I understood that I have control over the pencil and over what I want to do. Not some structured art assignment that tells me to have a meaning in my artwork, to go with the norms of art. It’s a language of my own. When I see the overcrowded lines, I feel the noisiness; when I see spaced lines, I feel the indifference and coldness. That day, I spent the entire afternoon scribbling and looking at lines and shapes that I had created with a pencil. A language is forming. Being focused on my “language”, I registered my change as I started tuning out my anxious and overthinking self. I am feeling the present, because every single line, is controlled by me. I need to stay focused on expressing my feelings through lines. One might ask why I wouldn’t write journals instead, that way I can articulate my feelings more intentionally. But writing is restrained, you have grammatical and spelling structures to follow. There are so many rules to adhere to in order to let the future you look back and be able to understand what the present you are trying to say. That’s exhausting. I started to use pencil to scribble every day before I go to bed. It’s refreshing, almost like a personal space where I express all my feelings that I’ve experienced in the day. Through utilizing my pencil, I can appreciate the beauty in gradient of shades, the beauty of my consciousness. I consider penciling the medium that allows me to connect with myself and be more aware of my thoughts and feelings. Even though pencil can only produce monochromatic colors, they mean color to me. It is my form of communication with myself. I’ve been out with my friends several times after quarantine. But now, I no longer feel the constant need to be accompanied by someone to be distracted from my thoughts. I’ve learned how to respect my personal space and alone time. A clear line between my “me time” and my socializing times is established. This change for me is immaculate as I change the lens I use to see the world in, but this time, with more self-consciousness with it. Pencil helped me comprehend the importance of self-acceptance and appreciation of the unnoticeable things in life. It made me more conscious of my surrounding as I continuously try to seek things that I’ve taken for granted or have ignored. It freed me from my personal crisis, giving color to my world through shades.