Disease, Isolation, and Adaptability
The last two years have been extremely stressful for just about everyone on the entire planet. The entire planet seemed to be under an extreme version of Murphy’s Law, where literally everything, everywhere, in every category went absolutely crazy, annoying, and wrong in the span nearly two years. So, instead of focusing on all the bad things of this planet during this, I am going to be speaking more about my personal experience with it, and how it affected me and my family, and how we all adapted to it.
So, there was this build up in the earliest parts of 2020 where almost everything was normal, I went to school, went out to eat with my family, and went to the gym. Just about everything was fine, there was just a weird disease in China…. that is until, 3 months later, some people thought if would be a great idea to go traveling, and then bring a deadly disease over to our side of the pond, causing an increase of cases amongst population centers. It was March when the quarantine started, a week before the spring break of my school. To me, this was honestly a great thing for me, time to catch up on overdue homework, and have a great four week break. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as great for the rest of my family, my grandmother was a restaurant worker, and was out of a job for a good chunk of time, and my grandfather was someone who placed the luggage onto planes, and had to keep working through it. The worst of these scenarios was my mother, who was a healthcare worker and had to go to the balloon fiesta site and work there, and it was horribly stressful for her.
Though, as all time passed on. thankfully, it got better for us. My grandparents both retired, my mother finished her “shift” at the site, and I finished my schooling and graduated. As a less good, but still wonderful fact was I love going for drives and during the first 2–3 months, the roads and streets were clear and wonderful! My spring break eventually became a 5 month long stress free vacation, and it was wonderful! You know, besides all the death, destruction, and riots on the news, but whatever! In August, school started, and thus started a very large shift in my life.
My schooling started in August of that year, and was entirely online classes with CNM. It was actually quite nice, and I grew to like it a lot more than in-person classes. When I got done with that semester, the world actually seemed to be going back to normal a bit, a vaccine was developed, businesses were opening again, we were able to go to zoos and gyms again. The beginning of 2021, after focusing on my schooling and not bothering during the pandemic, I was finally able to start looking for a job, while also working on my second and third semester of school. Following this, I got my vaccine, and right after finishing my 3rd semester at CNM, I got my first job, and am now in my first in-person class at CNM, this semester. Thankfully, this year has had nothing too eventful compared to last year, and for that, I’m thankful.
As for the actual historical side of all of this, with my own stories and overall the entire historical impact of these few years. I honestly think it’ll just have a quick, immediate political aftermath, then eventually just fade into memory. The only way I could see this pandemic having a lasting, worldwide historical impact, it would have had to pull a political trigger that eventually causes the collapse of a world superpower, either through economic or political reasons. To be honest, I could see that coming. In 20 years, I think most people won’t exactly see this virus as a tragedy or a complete mess, and instead more an unfortunate point in recent history where people died and were idiots for a majority of it. Personally, with the stresses and headaches these years have caused me, I would say the bad outweighs the good, so I will be more than happy to completely forget about this whole thing as soon as possible, have it be a mere off-mention to anyone around me.
So, in conclusion, this whole pandemic and year in general has caused not only me, but nearly every living person on this planet, and the only good thing that could be come from this could be a learning experience for future peoples in the recent future. Overall, I’ll be glad when these experiences are far behind us and nothing more than a memory.