Life in the Age of COVID-19: Entry 2
Week 3 of Quarantine (Sorry, I didn’t write one during week 2). I was inspired by the other diaries last week to try out time tracking as a framework. It was fun but I also feel like it made my actions feel more performative and sectioned off. I’ll probably test out different formats over the weeks!
Occupation: Still a graduating senior
Displacement Status: Still quarantined in family home, but out of self-isolation!
State of calmness: It really depends/fluctuates. I’ve been having a lot of mood swings and ups & downs. I’m very lucky to be in the situation I’m in, and can’t even imagine what others might be going through if even I am often in a state of frenzy. Plus, having wacky ass dreams.
Reaction to local/state/federal response to the area: I’m glad that shelter in place is, well, in place, but the rich white people in West LA are still at farmer’s markets and eating on the patios of fancy restaurants claiming it’s “takeout.” When will they realize this is a collective problem? I’m hoping that all the leftist talks I’ve been going to are onto something and we can catalyze this moment to make some of the large-scale political-economic changes that we so desperately need.
Day 1: Monday, March 30th
9:30am: I wake up from a strange dream involving chasing, running away, having double ears on one side of my face, being in love, being scared, and stealing a car maybe? I decide I should probably start a dream journal because all of them have been wild so far.
10am: Zoom workout with Shannon and Ezekiel. We’re getting shredded!!! I feel the adrenaline and hope to ride it throughout the day.
12pm: Have dumplings and tea, chat briefly with parents, and read some thought-provoking articles about COLA 4 All organizing (see here and the response).
12:30pm: Zoom class on community development, basically chat with Ezekiel on zoom direct chat throughout.
2pm: Read this amazing article that summarizes a lot of what’s been on my mind lately. Do some work on my thesis.
4pm: Call with organizing fellowship and attend a COLA event, call people from New Jersey for the fellowship, have dinner.
8pm: Attend Berkeley YDSA meeting with my good friend Andy, then call Zaphira, who finally decided to go home.
10pm: Do a bit of schoolwork and fill out the CENSUS(!) with my roommates. Reflect on how our names will be enshrined together for the next 10 years(!)
12–1am ish: Listen to Harry Potter audiobook as I fall asleep. A few friends and I decide to go through all the books (one a week) and do film screenings on Sundays.
Day 2: Tuesday, March 31st
9am: Wake up slowly and roll out of bed. Trying to mix up my routine by sleeping on the couch in my room (funny how the smallest things seem to alter reality a bit nowadays).
10am: Do the shred and family 早操, listen to Upstream podcast on worker coops and my head is buzzing.
“The coop is the closest you’ll ever get to being your own boss,” the podcast said.
The podcast makes the argument that worker coops are “islands in a sea of capitalism,” but that they won’t be effective unless they engage with the broader movement. I’ve spent the last year+ developing my own theories on leadership and organizational structures, and they seem to fit well with the worker coop model. I consider starting my own someday.
12:30pm: Do a little French Duolingo, have lunch with parents (still across the counter), read Shannon’s Quarantine diary (makes me smile), and call my friend in the Netherlands who tells me about his new minor in “complex systems” as a solution to the problem posed by this video we’re obsessed with. I also hear about his experience WWOOFing over winter break and project to make his university a zoop.
2pm: Have a Zoom class in which the Prof spends the entire time checking in individually with everyone to see how we’re doing. I appreciate that she cares but was also looking to use classes as a distraction from corona shit rather than talk about it more, so I kind of tune out and start reading other Quarantine diaries. I then attempt to “Zoom audit” a class by my favorite professor, but we just watch a documentary called Disruption, which I find clear but kind of underwhelming.
5pm: Skype date with Sylvain in which we discuss, among other things, what letters we would be (I’m H and he’s Z — guess why).
7pm: Mini lectures in a series my friends and I are doing to teach each other stuff! This one was about our criminal justice system, what’s wrong with it (spoiler: a lot), and restorative justice as a potential solution. My mom watches with me as I’m officially out of self isolation now!
9pm: Have a rather intense talk with my mom covering all of the tension points we’ve had over the last few years, ending in a lot of crying and hugging. I feel emotionally drained but happy we addressed it.
12–1am ish: hArrRy P0tt3r
Day 3: Wednesday, April 1st
9am: Awaken, start dream journal (it’s hella weird and definitely references some important points in the talk from last night), read this article against productivity crazes during the virus. It’s funny how all the steps I’ve taken to intentionally battle my internalized hyper-productive mindset have gone out the window as I seem to need it to stay sane right now. I reflect on this more and then aimlessly stare at the ceiling for a while.
10am: It’s a rest day for the shred, so I enjoy a leisurely breakfast with parents, next to each other (!!!). My mother calls me to help rearrange the kitchen and roasts me for not setting up the cushions properly in our backyard. Ah, it’s good to be back.
11am: Have a call with my fellowship boss then one with people from the Poly Women Project who are gathering feedback for a group dating app they are trying to create (It’s awesome how communities are coming together during this time!)
12pm: Read some news, check messages, and start researching the socioeconomic effects of covid-19 to help my friend with a project. Attend Zoom lecture on worker coops (awesome!) and have a 体操 session with family.
2pm: Thesis seminar which is supposed to be a three-hour critique of new drafts. It miraculously ends early and I’m reminded of a concept from my summer job when meetings ended early that I absolutely hated called “time back.” Is my time not my own? Did I give it to you? I don’t think I consented to that… Have tea and snacks with parents and listen to part of another lecture with the same leftist messaging as all the others (I’m on board, but staying skeptical til I hear/think of some concrete action items).
5pm: Chat with Shannon and other friends about places we’ve been in China, looking at maps wistfully as though we could travel there now. Do a bit more on the covid project and attempt to clean my desktop with 100+ files. Does my life fit into folders?
7pm: Have dinner and go on a rather angsty walk while listening to part 2 of the worker coops podcast. Finish cleaning desktop and decide to change my wallpapers (seems like an important choice for some reason). Do some reading on the Black Panther Party for my sociology class.
10pm-I wanna say 1:30?: Call Ezekiel and Gracie (the roommates are now all separated, sad), then my friend Zedin. Zedin and I work on the lecture we’re giving together for the series titled “The Kink Talk! Lessons in Consent and Communication.” We were just going to talk about it briefly, but end up spending several hours making it. I’m very excited about this and go to bed happy.
Day 4: Thursday, April 2nd
9am: Wake up, try and fail to remember dream, read some things (I vaguely recall a British sex club going online? Cool), roll out of bed for tea and breakfast during which I rant about Polanyi’s notion of fictitious commodities to my patient family. Do the daily shred and finally respond to texts from some new friends/potential dates (feels significant as I had a mental block against this for several weeks).
11am: FaceTime with Gaia from my backyard and they make me consider asking my job to start earlier and let me take time off after the virus stuff is more contained instead of after graduation. We discuss Leonard Cohen poetry, Tinder and commodification, and I’m again told I should watch Killing Eve. Amidst the sadness of basically all social interactions moving online, I’m grateful for the normalcy of calling long distance friends.
1pm: Have lunch with family, make a video for my friend’s birthday, and learn some French. Ma famille habite dans une maison ! Ton chat va bien ? (I can’t say much yet, obviously)
2pm: Half-focus on Zoom class, half do other things. Attend a “town hall” for my major and lobby to have a commencement sometime later instead of online. Have tea with family in backyard, then play some ping pong on a table we picked up from the street a few months ago. Make calls for fellowship.
6pm: My brother arrives with his wife and toddler child! The mood of the house becomes much more playful and everyone is happy that they’re here. We will all be quarantining together so that’s fun. Go on a walk with parents. Good vibes overall!
8pm: Gracie and another friend give a lecture on sleep in our mini series. I relay the info to my mother and she complains that she’d been trying to tell me for years that I can’t just “catch up” on sleep. Hang with parents and discuss love languages.
10pm: Watch a course capture, fuck around and chat with people, and listen to Harry Potter while playing around with the ropes Sylvain left me as well as coloring in the cats of my journal with neon pink and orange. Feels cathartic!
12:45ish: Sleep
Day 5: Friday, April 3rd
8:30am: Awake naturally before alarm (that never happens), do another weird dream journal entry, and my mind is a bit distraught. I can’t seem to differentiate what is a dream and what is just a thought. My brother comes in to teach his class and I do the workout with Shannon and Ezekiel in my backyard instead.
10am: Have tea and watch a cooking show with my mother and sister-in-law, then “go to” my Salsa class back in the yard. My mom and aunt copy my movements and the three of us laugh a lot as our limbs flail about :D
12pm: Have Zoom meeting with professor that goes better than expected, then call another long distance friend. We talk about the insanity of everything. “I wouldn’t be surprised if, in 5 months, there are no more nation-states,” he says.
2pm: Read poetry by Gloria Anzaldúa, an amazing Mexican-American queer academic + activist + writer. Though our experiences are very different, I relate to her beautiful words about not feeling like she belongs anywhere and constantly dealing with clashes across cultures and identities.
“I remain who I am, multiple and one of the herd, yet not of it…I am fully formed, carved by the hands of the ancients, drenched with the stench of today’s headlines. But my own hands whittle the final work. Me,” she writes.
This kind of grappling with my individual identity vs collective mindsets has been on my mind for a while, and is a constant tug . I was ranting about it to my therapist when they pulled this book off the shelf and told me I have to read it. Not sure when I’ll get a chance to return it.
4pm: Call my advisor to talk about new draft and grad school. She’s being so nice to me and I feel blessed.
5pm: Skype with Sylvain and watch the first episode of Sense8 using the Netflix Party extension (highly recommend — both the show and the extension). Do some random social media scrolling and finally succumb to watching some Tik Toks (as predicted, I don’t like them).
7:30pm: Dinner and family time! Call my uncle in China, watch cartoons with my nephew, honor my parents’ + uncle’s parents for 清明节 (Chinese holiday for honoring ancestors), and have some late-night potatoes. Do a bit of French learning and more hanging out.
10:30pm: Acupuncture party with parents and rewatch the last season 2 episode of Babylon Berlin in preparation for the new season (exciting!)
12:30am: Sleep
Day 6: Saturday, April 4th
8:30am: Wake up and slowly arise from bed as usual, write dream journal which I then share with family members over breakfast. Ezekiel’s little brother joins our workout this morning, and my nephew pops in as well. We have a fun time playing in the backyard.
11am: Zedin leads a game of an RPG called “Everyone is John” which I attend with Sylvain and Zedin’s friends from college. I call myself Johnopoly, after my other pseudo-name Monopoly (another story), and laugh at the different variations of “John” I see in the Discord channel. We’re in Pompeii right before the eruption, there’s a golden dildo involved, and I’m happy.
1:30pm: I read part of a book called “The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty.” It takes me back to the days when development studies and development economics were on my mind all the time, and I think about how my thoughts have changed throughout the years. I decide that the book isn’t that illuminating overall, but I’ll probably keep reading it because it makes me feel close to a former self.
4pm: Creative Writing party led by Shannon! Zaphira, Ezekiel, Mocty, Thomas, and Andy attend, and the theme is Ancestor Day. I choose the prompt “Describe Your Hand” and somehow end up writing about the Monkey King 孙悟空, followed by “The One That Got Away,” which turns out quite angstily (is that a word?) Gaia and their partner join as well!
6pm: Have dinner with the whole family (back to doing dishes for 9 people woo), watch Sense8 and chat with Sylvain, then my brother drags me to see the second “PhD Story” movie, which I thoroughly enjoy.
9:30pm: Type up this piece from journal notes (I definitely prefer writing on paper) up to this point. Feels meta to be writing about writing this lol.
11pm: Watch an episode of Babylon Berlin with parents, then sleep.
Day 7: Sunday, April 5th
7am: Wake up abruptly from another crazy dream, read this article about dreams which clarifies some things, and can’t really go back to sleep but sort of slip in and out of consciousness. This leaves me in a bad mood all day.
9:30am: Decide I’m over looking at my screen all day so I skip the shred and go on a run instead, finishing the Sorcerer’s Stone audiobook. Not gonna lie, I cried when Dumbledore awarded Neville 10 points for standing up to his friends, leading Gryffindor to win the house cup.
11am: Finish “The Idealist” and change my mind about it not being illuminating. While I disagree with a lot of the author’s framing and think it could’ve been more critical, I do think it says a lot about the state of development projects and “experts” like Sachs. Reflect on how awesome but time-consuming ethnography is, and try to take tips for my own project. Eat lunch in my Totoro onesie in solitude as I cast my phone aside and decide to have a phone/computer-less day.
1pm: I find my mother and sister-in-law doing water colors, and I join. It’s super relaxing and I end up drawing something that looks like something an elementary schooler would do. Of course it’s rainbow ;)
2pm: Start the book Shannon sent me, “The Secret History of the Mongol Queens,” which I love already, but don’t get too far before I fall asleep. Great choice Shannon.
4:30pm: Awaken from my nap and the next several hours are a blur as I start and finish “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” Sometime in between that I eat, but don’t pay much attention.
8pm: Try multiple methods to get the Sorcerer’s Stone movie working on my TV, and eventually find an old DVD (wow, so vintage). Nothing makes me happy like a good HP viewing :)
11:30pm: Get a massage from my uncle (so blessed to have an acupuncturist in the family) and go to bed early, hoping my spirits will improve tomorrow.
