What Day is it Today?
“Throughout this time of quarantine, I realized that living in self-isolation reconnects you with your mind and family, and prevents more people from getting the virus.”
Every day, time moves as slowly as a sloth. Almost two months have passed since the stay-at-home order was announced. I have never felt this unenergetic before in my life. I have tried multiple things to beat this quarantine boredom, to the point where I had to search up things to do during quarantine on Google.
As a very extroverted person, staying at home all day is making me sick. I imagined I would have spent the last semester of my junior year like there was no tomorrow. Before the mental breakdowns and the struggles of college applications, I wanted to enjoy my life hanging out with my friends and eating a whole lot of food. But what in the world? My expectations were crushed when the stay-at-home order was announced. What was I supposed to do with my life now? School, eat, sleep, go on Tiktok…, this routine has been constantly repeating for quite some time. It’s very stressful and annoying, but the only way to fight this off is for me to be able to go outside to get some fresh L.A. air and meet some of my friends, which will sadly not be an option anytime soon. Let’s face it! Staying at home is so boring and repetitive.
I wake up every day at 8:25 a.m. to go to school. Just two to three steps out of my bed and I’m already there! Korean, Math, Art, Biology, History, and finally English. For almost five hours, I spend the day sitting down, working on classwork, and then homework. No wonder I have no volume on my butt anymore. After school ends at 3:00 p.m., I do a little bit of a workout. The majority of the posts I see on Instagram or TikTok is how to stay fit during quarantine or what workouts to do at home. But, what I decided to do was the famous “Chloe Ting: 2 Week Abs Workout.”
I hear sounds of heavy breathing through the daily FaceTime call I have with a few of my friends. I can feel my abs trying to crawl through the thick layer of skin, hoping that it will be more defined the next morning. The reason why I work out? Well, I have been gaining way too much weight over the past few weeks due to my mother’s 24-hour presence at home. She does a whole lot of experiments with all the various ingredients she brings home from the market. Some examples are souffle pancakes to an unappetizing healthy juice with all the green vegetables you can think of. You name it, she has probably already made it.
However, I was able to realize that I should truly be grateful for all the things I have right now: a happy and healthy family, the amount of food we have in our two refrigerators, and the ability to contact anyone with the help of technology. Who knew we could watch a movie with a group of friends by screen sharing? Throughout this time of quarantine, I realized that living in self-isolation reconnects you with your mind and your family, and prevents more people from getting the virus. Quarantine helped me to regain a different perspective on how I should view the world. We should truly take this time to reflect and not take anything for granted—even if it means getting chubby, everyone should remain calm.
(May 4, 2020)