Fifty-three books, 119 movies, 75 walks with the dog, 27 recipes executed flawlessly (give or take a few), a million hours spent on FaceTime.
My skin didn’t clear up, I didn’t finish my Lasting Work of Important Fiction, I didn’t initiate a change in this world. Quarantine has, undeniably, turned me into my best and my worst self. While quarantine is far from over, I'm going home to my New York City.
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I think about my grandfather. He lived the most storied life of anything I know — and I don’t even know half of it. He survived World War II in his home country of Italy, started a new life in Venezuela where he met my American grandmother, moved to the US only speaking broken English to a place where no one spoke his Italian or Spanish and worked two jobs.
I think about what I’ve done. I think of a line from "Broad City” that Abbi asks Illana on her birthday that I always annoy my friends with on their birthdays: "What have you done this past year that you're proud of and what are you gonna do this upcoming year?" I ask myself a similar question: What have I done the past 10 years that I'm proud of and what am I gonna do with this upcoming 10 years? I started and graduated high school, college, got a driver's license. I completed five internships, have had three full time jobs, written at least a trillion words, decorated a comfortable apartment, lived in Boston, New York City and made life-long friends in both places. Traveled across this country, a handful of places across the globe and loved every minute.
During quarantine, I’ve realized that I’m just...obsessed with the future. We live in a world where our twenties mean everything to us. Obsessed with the next move. The next outing with friends. The next time I’ll travel to my hometown. I’m always looking forward. Planning and plotting my next move. But is there something wrong with that? Is it vain, shallow? Is it immature, or my lust for life? I haven’t decided yet.
Where will I go on my next trip? When is the next concert I’m attending? Who is the next friend visiting me? I have no answers to these questions spiraling through my head. I tend to lose sight of what’s happening right in front of me. Does that make me unappreciative? I haven't decided yet.
My first days in quarantine, in self-isolation, I felt guilty for feeling like a shell of my former self, wearing the same Astroworld shirt five days in a row (and it’s not even my shirt). I was overwhelmed with anxiety and hopelessness.
We cannot party, distract, or overwork ourselves out of the discomfort.
But I’ve been learning to reconnect with the moment. I’ve always taken one day at a time. And while I’m spontaneous and impulsive, it has been hard to take one day at a time now. One hour, one minute. I don’t know where the next minute will lead and I’ve accepted that. Tomorrow is a new day, a new experience.
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I lost my job in September of 2019. It wasn’t my dream job. It wasn’t even necessarily a good or fun job. But I felt like I lost everything. My sense of control, routine, self. For some reason, it’s still something I’m putting behind me even after finding a new job. It took me a long time to feel that sense of control and routine again that I wanted. It took me a long time to feel financially secure again, to even feel secure in myself and my worth.
Quarantine and a pandemic has put into perspective what I want. And to feel secure without my routines and daily life. Life is too short. I feel robbed, like I’m losing a year. I don’t want a second job, I don’t want to be crying over boys, I don’t want to be rushing my life.
I’ve always been a “yes, man.” Yes to a trip to Chicago, yes to that extra shot with you, yes to proofreading your thesis the night before it’s due.
I think about timing. Timing is everything. Timing has been both in my favor and against me. It seemed that nothing in my life that I had pre-quarantine was going to be there for me on the other side when this is all over. I was laid off at the beginning of the pandemic and my relationship, my friendships and my home have been placed on pause. But I’m not mad at anyone but the circumstances.
Everything that once fit, suddenly didn’t. FaceTime calls with city friends have turned us into long-distance penpals.
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I am so sad about the state of the world that it feels like a knife twisting in the pit of my stomach. The urge to cry has been hanging over me for weeks like a day that never comes. The mix of absorbing so much devastating news then consuming almost nothing. It hurts me that I cannot attend rallies in NYC when I want to fight so badly for my friends, my community. Black Lives Matter. America was already broken. This is deeper than a virus.
To the hundreds of thousands of lives we’ve lost to COVID-19, to the thousands fighting and protesting in the name of Black Lives Matter, to the ones witnessing death and loss every day and have to come home and move forward with their lives, to the ones who keep our world turning everyday.