Items

• 
  2019

  Men In The Mirror

  These are all doodles I made during the pandemic when I felt myself crashing, self-sabotaging, or just critical condition emotionally. The drawing on the left is the most recent drawing I made. It shows that I have a heart that is depressed and a mind that is rotting away with a confused face. In the background, you also see the word help radiate from me. This symbolizes how I feel about my education. I feel like, during the pandemic, I'm not able to bounce ideas back and forth on my own, so being alone, I get lost and overcrowded. The one on the top right also expresses my view of myself. It shows that I have a bright flame that either gets drowned with depression or fueled with anger. This relates to the pandemic because when everything got shut down, I Felt very divided with what I was doing and who I was. Lastly, the bottom right picture shows me at a table looking at my hands with a bowl of fruit and pills. This was drawn about halfway through my fall 2020 semester because I have focused on medication. Still, they made me also feel emotionless and more confused about my own personal identity and where my heart was with my art if I can't express it. After this drawing, I became numb and ended up not doing most of my finals and leaving me empty for a while during winter break. The only thing that got me out was seeing my family again after seven months of not really seeing anyone close to me. I also stopped taking meds and had a withdrawal effect at the begging of my spring semester. Now I'm just trying to keep my head up to return to normalcy and see my friends that closely monitored me before knowing how I get affected by certain things.
• 
  2020-11-12

  "How the pandemic got people smoking again" - Vox

  With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have been pressured to develop bad habits such as overeating, alcoholism, doom scrolling, and impulse shopping. But one pandemic indulgence that stands out to medical officials and journalists is smoking, which damages lungs and puts one at an increased risk from dying of COVID-19. In an article for Vox, journalist Melinda Fakuade provides readers with an overview of the reasons why more people have taken up smoking during the COVID-19 pandemic in spite of the increased risk of death. According to Fakuade, a major factor that explains the increased prevalence of smoking during the COVID-19 pandemic is the sheer boredom that comes with being unable to leave home without risking contracting COVID-19. Not being able to leave home and spend money on other amenities also increases one's access to discretionary spending, which can be used to fund cigarette smoking and other bad habits. Fakuade also emphasizes the role of stress, which induces people to take up bad habits such as smoking as a coping mechanism. According to her, smoking functions as a way of maintaining a routine and sense of control in a time of extreme instability. Finally, Fakuade considers whether or not the increased prevalence of smoking during the COVID-19 pandemic constitutes a reflection of an internal "death wish," on the part of smokers.