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2020-03
Finding Joy in the Little Things
As someone with anxiety, existing during the pandemic lockdown of 2020 was very difficult. I found myself even more anxious with health-related thoughts, especially at the beginning of the lockdowns in March of 2020. There wasn't a ton of accurate information being disseminated, and I remember my family and I religiously sanitizing everything, including shopping bags. One of the ways we kept each other sane was by recreating experiences at home. For example, I created a "home theater," for my boyfriend. In reality it was just a sign that said "Home Theater," with a few movies we could stream, but it made the experience fun. We joked about the little movie "tickets" I made (scraps of paper) as well as the theater seats (pillows propped on the bed). In the end, it was moments like this that made the first wave of Covid bearable. -
2021-05
Smelly Hands Are Clean Hands
I welcomed my first child into the world at the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States, leaving my fiancé and me isolated at home with a newborn. After three months, we desperately needed a night away from our precious bundle of joy. The only restaurant open was a sketchy looking German beer garden blasting accordion music, but we were just thrilled to be spending some adult time together while our son was with my mother for the evening. Upon walking into the restaurant, I readily pumped some off-brand hand sanitizer into my hand, and nudged my fiancé to do the same. I rubbed my hands together as we were seated, and breathed a sigh of relief that we were free from the colicky cries of our beloved child for the night. Suddenly my nostrils filled with the stench of bottom shelf tequila. The hand sanitizer wasn’t simply off-brand, it had been homemade by the restaurant. It was as if whomever had concocted the sanitizer was convinced that the best way to ward off the COVID-19 virus (and the fear attributed to it), was to completely bombard the olfactory system with the smell of alcohol. My fiancé remarked that because the sanitizer smelled so horribly, it must be killing all of the germs; unknowingly, he became a perfect example of how individuals have come to associate certain scents, like alcohol, with the illusion of cleanliness. Thinking back on that experience, I find myself pondering just how effective their homemade hand sanitizer really was. Or, more than likely, was it a last ditch effort (forced into action by society’s panic buying of cleansers), to provide their customers a sense of security through unconscious sensory associations. -
2020-05-04
Get This Bread
With so many people stuck at home, some working from home and some with more time on their hands than they know what to do with, baking has seen a surge in popularity. From simple loaves of bread to fancy layered cakes, a lot of people have tapped in to their inner baker. -
2020-04-05
Corporate Growth
This is a photo of Elon Musk smoking marijuana on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, captioned with the phrase “show me the money.” This is a reference to the astronomical growth of the Tesla Corporation in 2020 and the average investor’s potential to secure massive gains, as well as a joking reference to the near worship of Elon Musk that can be found in the subreddit ‘WallStreetBets.’ This subreddit often features ‘absolute madlads’ making huge gambles on stocks (usually TSLA, AAPL, or AMZN) and subsequently either securing massive returns tallying into the hundreds of thousands or losing everything. When most of my family was laid off from their jobs, my brother and I turned to day trading to keep ourselves and our family afloat. I was one of the only ones still employed at the time, and I was doing this in addition to working up to 75 hours a week to take advantage of overtime pay stacked on top of hazard pay. Although only my father and I were still working, everyone in the family still had bills to pay and the rent was still due. Tesla’s stock, specifically, has grown almost 500% this year and is set to grow even more. This meme is somewhat of an inside joke my brother and I had as we began securing leverage and buying covered calls on TSLA to increase our overall cash flow with the little savings we had to work with. We were quite literally counting on Elon Musk and his revolutionary car company that we had placed our faith in during this time to pay our rent. Luckily, it worked out for us. Ironically, the massive transfer of wealth to corporations from small businesses that went under as a result of COVID-19 was incredibly beneficial for my family and I since we invested in the right stocks at the right time. -
2020-03-11
My Dream Motorcycle
My dad and I have built cars and motorcycles in the past so I thought to myself on the first day in quarantine I should get my own project. The next day I found a perfect candidate for a motorcycle rebuild. I spent 4 months taking apart the bike and giving it my own look.