When there’s an effective, publicly available COVID-19 vaccine that lets us finally resume normal life, I’m never going to waste another day for as long as I live.
Thanks to this year, I’m now far too familiar with what wasting away feels like, as I’m sure almost everyone is. Far too familiar with sitting inside for weeks at a time, far too familiar with going without the vast majority of my normal hobbies and pastimes, far too familiar with missing friends, far too familiar with skipping holidays, birthdays, special occasions, far too familiar with feeling like absolute garbage because of all the things I’ve become far too familiar with. I can keep going, but I’m sure you get the picture. The vast majority of my Senior year has been spent watching dates on the calendar roll by as I wait for some kind of end to quarantine that just isn’t coming, as I wait for Senior year to actually feel like Senior year. With cases absolutely skyrocketing now, and my extremely high-risk Hoboken roommate falling behind on her plans to find a new place by the Spring, I’m not even optimistic about my chances of returning to campus next semester.
One of the few silver linings I can find about this experience is that it has completely transformed my appreciation of time. Once normal life finally resumes, it won’t feel normal anymore. It will actually feel like the precious, fragile privilege that it really is. I’ll never want to spend another full day doing nothing in my house ever again unless I am absolutely forced to. I’m never going to cancel plans simply because I’m tired, or because of some tiny inconvenience like bad weather. I’m going to show up to my job (wherever I end up working) every weekday ready to work like hell, and talk to everyone I possibly can with my real, non-Zoom assisted face. I’m gonna find time for all my hobbies, climb until I can send at least 5.14’s, get more involved in politics, shake my ass with abandon in every club in Brooklyn, learn hundreds more awesome recipes, actually figure out out how to maintain a good diet, hike all the way from my house in central Connecticut to the Canadian border, you name it. The point is, I’m going to try and get as much out of every single day as I possibly can, never forgetting that my freedom can be stripped away so much more easily than I ever knew prior to this year. Gone will be the productivity problems I’ve been struggling with endlessly over the course of this year, gone will be the feeling of wasting away.
I do genuinely believe everything I just wrote, and those urges to carpe diem have been taking up a lot of real estate in my head this week with news of successful vaccine trials, but there’s also a subtle sinister side to them. The entire attitude is built on an expectation that external factors — the arrival of a vaccine — will fix my problems, instead of expecting to fix them myself. I can’t end quarantine, of course, but I can still try to get more out of the work-from-home lifestyle than I have been so far. I mentioned my productivity problems, but I should elaborate: I keep falling behind on assignments, skipping or missing meetings, not eating properly, not using any of the exercise equipment in my basement, doing the bare minimum in classes and for clubs, missing my own deadlines for this column, and so much more. It was at its worst during election week, as I was so paralyzed with anxiety that I couldn’t do much of anything outside of watching the news, but I’ve struggled with getting things done all year. I mostly just want to spend all day playing games, watching TV, sleeping, and complaining about everything going on. I can fix this right now, I can catch up on everything I’m behind on in just a few days and stay on top of them, I can start tackling at least some of those goals I mentioned while still being safe about the virus, and find other valuable, COVID-safe things to learn and do in the immediate sense. All it takes is the right mindset, the motivation to get up and actually do it instead of wasting time. Anxiously pining for a vaccine or mourning for the Senior year that could have been every day will only make that more difficult.
Besides, even once this is truly over it’ll take that same kind of motivation to unlearn all the habits of this year, remember this feeling of wasting away, and stay committed to making the most of life. To not waste time being anxious about whatever 2020 could be coming next.
When there’s a vaccine, I’m never going to waste another day again.
But I don’t really want to waste any of the days between now and then, either.
Be First to Comment