Salutations and welcome to my personal site: take two.
2019 was a year rife with realization, change, and growth. I had just turned 22 upon publishing my site, and I find myself, a year and sixty-seven days later, hunching over my kitchen table in quarantine from the spread of the novel COVID-19 virus. It is labelled a pandemic now, and I know the aggressive and accelerated infectious global assault will be referenced in history many a tomb.
It seems that the learning and the adpating has to go on, whether I want to, or whether I don't. 2019 began with a pitchfork yielded but a torch lacking, and my life intentions became convoluted, muddied, suspended mid-pre-flight, in the fog. I think sometimes: how do I feel this much grief when I have barely lived? Yet it is a familiar duvet, a cold satin feeling I hold close between my thumbs and over my tears. It is a comfortable sadness, and I was lost in its soothing wailing. I still am, on some days.
Defeat or Insight: Choose Your Own Adventure! I flip the pages back and forth, and some days I linger longer than others. That was what 2019 felt like, anyway. But life halts for no grievous nor celebratory trajectory. It only keeps going. So I kept going, and I spent my Chinese New Year of this year back home with my family and friends in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and I came back to my new home with my corn boy and perfect dog, nourished.
I left Malaysia also thinking, however, that I'd be seeing the last of the handful of cases of the coronavirus that began to pop up more concerningly so during my last week there. Since being back in the States, however, the virus and the infection rate has only gotten worse, with fatalities being reported daily across the nation.
I have been in quarantine close to three weeks now. We usually stock up for a month for food anyway, so the grocery-shopping for the quarantine did not deviate much from our regularly scheduled programming. We replenished our dog food supply for Jenkins, hunkered down with our "Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time" locked in the 3DS and loaded, and "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice" ready to be replayed again to acheive the true ending (!!! Will update when that has happened!!!), and hoped for the best.
The best is... Still on the way. Voting in the Democratic primary has to be not only postponed due to the stay-at-home order from Gov. DeWine, but the employment rate has increased exponentially since the first American diagnosed with the virus. I had a job lined up upon my return to the States in February, but my employment status is now put on indefinite hold due to the languishing coronavirus situation affecting the world.
From my conversations with family and friends over the subsequent weeks, we agree that there seems to be an abrupt unanimous global confusion in almost every industry concerning either a) hiring new employees or b) retaining or letting go of current employees. Stephen and I barely had any dog sitting requests either as people have been working from home now and can tend to their own pets, so generalized anxiety has definitely been my mood of the month, loudly playing on repeat in the background.
But with each day that passes, with its worth of upside down sand timer time, I am forced to learn more about the life I live and the lives around me. The knowledge of the many intimate, incandescent connections weaving my heart to those that I hold fast to and from their heart to mine, humbles me, and leads me to believe that I have to adapt and keep treading water, because I have people and moments that are worth it, per chance to dream.
I'm terrified, but life goes on, and I breathe.
I hope I keep writing. I like it.