Thoughts From Day 18 of COVID-19 Quarantine (Published several months later)

Today is April 2, 2020. We've been in quarantine for 18 days now. Well, my family has. But we started quarantining before it was mandatory, back when it was just strongly suggested.

I know people who are still going to work, people who wish they could go to work, and people who don't know if they will even have work to go back to when this is all over. I know people who hate quarantine because they feel trapped, and people who love this chance for life to slow down a little.

Time definitely runs funny when you don't have things like work and school to help you keep track of it. Most of the time it feels like days have suddenly become twice as long. But in the grand scheme of things, 18 days has gone by quickly.

It feels like we have more time, but really we have the same amount of time, we just have less things to fill that time with. Instead of spending 20 minutes driving to Starbucks to get coffee, I now spend 5 minutes at the coffee pot in my kitchen. Instead of spending an hour or more commuting, people now commute 30 seconds from their bedroom to their office down the hall. Instead of having to squeeze in an on the go dinner, we now have seemingly endless evening house in which to gather around the dining room table. There are no more after school activities for kids, and there are no more girls-nights-out, so instead families are gathering in living rooms. Dogs of the world have never been so happy now that their owners are home 24/7.

I've done my fair share of griping and complaining about being "stuck" at home and being bored for the last 16 days. But then on day 17, something shifted. I realized that most of those feelings were simply a mindset. I was feeding into the badness of the situation and giving it the power to dictate not just my schedule, but also my happiness. Being at home doesn't mean you can't still be happy. There's no sense in wallowing in despair when, really, things could be much worse. My family is healthy, nobody I know has passed from the virus, and we have everything we need at home. Why was I complaining so much?

So I stopped. I stopped whining to my friends about how bored I was and how I couldn't wait to be free again (I still can't wait to be free, but I try not to dwell on that). Instead I decided to make something good come from every day.

Yesterday, I walked 2 miles with Zeus, my dad and I took the ATV out for a ride around our property (and maybe a little neighborhood joyride...), and then we broke out our air rifle for some target practice. All things we could have done at any point in the 16 days prior, but just...didn't.

Today, we tested out a new recipe I found on Facebook back in October. We could have made it at any time, but apparently we were waiting for some kind of excuse to come along. And it did.

Quarantining wouldn't be my first pick on a list of activities, but it only sucks as much as you let it. Make the most of your abundant free time, your chance to slow down, your chance to be around the people you care about. Start a workout regimen and blow your coworkers away whenever you do finally get back to the office. FaceTime those cross-country relatives that you don't talk to enough. Read that book or watch that movie that you've been meaning to get to for like, a year.

You are by no means obligated to use this time to become a better person, but at the very least, don't become a worse person. Don't let your situation turn you bitter and spiteful.

Spontaneous Commitment

I've discovered a new facet of my personality that I'm dubbing "spontaneous commitment". I couldn't find a definition of spontaneous commitment, other than that of "murine erythroleukemic cells to terminal differentiation". But I have to idea what that means, so I'll just give it my own definition.

Spontaneous commitment is the sudden, but wholehearted dedication to something. The first time I noticed this in myself was in May of 2018 when I was in Las Vegas. We were walking through one of the hotel malls and passed my a tattoo/piercing shop. Within 10 seconds I had finalized my decision to get an ear piercing (a decision I had dwelled on for 6 months prior). I haven't regretted that decision for a single second since then (sort of beside the point, I guess).

Most recently, this phenomenon occurred on January 25th. My car had been snowbound to my driveway for 2 weeks (good old Colorado snowstorms to thank for that one) and I was fed up with having to get rides and borrow cars, and not be able to drive my own vehicle. Around 11:30 that night while I was browsing Pinterest, I decided that I was going to buy a Jeep. Right then and there, the decision was final.

Then, I came across an Instagram post that detailed the same idea (the original post was on Tumblr, but as far as I can tell it was deleted, so I'll put in the IG post).

https://www.instagram.com/p/BsUa065la8j/

Why do we dwell for so long on decisions when, a lot of times, we already know exactly what we want? Why must we consider the effects on others before we make a decision that will make ourselves happy? To some degree, I've decided that I'm not going to do that anymore. Obviously other people are involved you have to take them into consideration. But if I'm the only one involved, the only one affected, I'm not going to worry so much about other people and their opinions. Most of the time my deliberation is only because of the input I've gotten from other people; I know exactly what I want, but because somebody else said something, I can't disregard it.

So far I haven't regretted any of the decisions I've made through this "spontaneous commitment" idea, and in some ways, its satisfying to not stress over the outcome of trivial decisions. You make a decision and stick with it. I know it won't always go the way you want it to, but at least you didn't pine over the ins and outs of it and then have it not go your way.

Oblivion

(An excerpt from one of my journal entries dated July 24th, 4:15pm)

I want to be so much more, do so much more, and mean so much more. But how? How do I achieve respite for myself when so many others try to do the same and can't? What makes me so atypical that I should have an atypical life?

I, like everybody else, am nothing more than a chunk of evolved stardust making a futile attempt to give meaning to the cosmos. But assigned meaning isn't the same as divine meaning, It's not as important and it's far less accurate. Perhaps instead of seeking to find meaning, we should simply be open to allowing meaning to find us.

I don't know if any of this is even making sense, but I had to get it out and written so that maybe someday it will make sense. Or maybe it won't. Such is life and such is the way of the universe. In the end, none of it will matter anyways. In the end, the true end, nothing will matter because nothing will be. In 200 years nothing I have done or will do is going to matter. So why bother? Why try with such futility to change things to your liking or your benefit? Years from now when you don't matter anymore, someone else (who also doesn't matter) will just come along and change everything you did.


The size of the universe and how minuscule we all are in it is both comforting and terrifying at the same time.

Life Is What You Make It

More and more I believe that if you hate life, it will hate you back, and if you love life it will love you back.

The First Day of Class

The first day of class is the worst day of that class. Every class, every semester.

You walk into a room full of people you've never seen before in your life, and you sit down as far away from anybody else as possible. Then you wait for 10 or 12 or 20 minutes, praying in agony that you're in the right room.

Every time the door opens those people you don't know look up, trying to guess if it's the professor or not (inevitably the professor will be one of the last people to come in before class is supposed to start.) And once the professor does show up, and the clock ticks over to the designated start time, the professor breaks the stark silence by saying "we'll wait a few more minutes in case people are lost" which only serves to prolong your anxiety.

Then finally, the professor stands. And finally they welcome everyone to whatever class and you breath a sigh of relief because finally you have confirmation that you have been in the right place this whole time (meanwhile somebody else has packed up and scurried out the door in search of the class they signed up for, but didn't end up in).

And then you start the worst part of it all: ice breakers. The professor will state their name, and say one useless fact about themselves, and then its your turn. "Let's go around the room and when we get to you tell us your name, your major, and one interesting fact about yourself!" And suddenly you've become the most uninteresting person on the entire earth.

So again, you wait in agony for 5 or 12 or 15 minutes while each and every person introduces themselves, and you wait and you try to think of some tiny factoid that won't sound completely stupid when it comes out of your mouth. And then it's your turn and you've forgotten your own name, let alone how to make yourself sound interesting. You probably make up a "fact" about yourself, just to get it over with.

And then, once all 32 people (and whoever just came in 27 minutes late) have introduced themselves, you begin the arduous task of reviewing the syllabus, that, oh, you were supposed to print and read before coming to class. Whoops. You pretend to try to listen, but in all reality these things are all the same even though Professor Whoever insists that "this syllabus isn't like the ones from your other teachers, so pay attention."

If you're lucky, that sums up class for the first day. If not, get ready; you have a 90 minute lecture coming at you.

Do You Ever Wonder How Much You Exist in Other People's Lives?

Sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

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I'm always curious if people think of me when a certain song comes on, or when they pass through a certain part of town. I wonder how many stories I've been a part of that I may have forgotten, how many pictures I've accidentally photo-bombed. I wonder if I still exist in the minds of people I don't speak to anymore. I wonder how many times a day I pass through someones mind.

I wonder how many people make up a narrative of my life when they see me. I wonder if they wonder about me. Do they have an opinion about me, about who they think I might be? Do they mentally give their opinions when they overhear my conversations? Perhaps they've seen me somewhere before, or perhaps they only think that.
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[http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/23536922667/sonder]

"You're smiling today."

You know those cheesy movie moments that you think would ever happen in real life? The ones where everything is okay and it means one of two things 1) that things are starting to look up and there will never be a thing wrong again, or 2) that everything is about to go to hell. I experienced one of those moments firsthand today.

Today started as a relatively normal day all things considered. I walked into work, dreading the next 8 hours as usual. But then somebody asked me what seemed like a pretty innocent question:

"Did you get a hair cut?"

I hadn't. Not recently anyway. And I told him so. And the conversation was over.

But then later, another friend said that I looked different today.

"You've worn that shirt before, you wear those jeans all the time and I've definitely seen those shoes before... but something's different."

After some discussion, the two came to a conclusion about what was different.

"You're smiling today."

Until then I don't think I realized how much I'd been letting things get to me. It was changing the way I looked, enough that people noticed.