What The Pandemic Taught Me
Who would have expected that we will be once (I hope so) living in such an isolated situation? Where all people are required to wear masks all day, encouraged to get their things done from home, and even told to avoid meeting each other unless necessary. It is a pity that we happen to be one of the generations who encounter this unwanted era.
But before we continue to put all the blame on this pandemic, let me travel back to the time where it hit for the first time.
In Indonesia, the first case of COVID-19 was detected on March 2, 2020. The news came out while I was preparing my luggage for my trip to Semarang. I had to go back to my dorm since the new semester was about to begin. I would be lying if I say the news didn’t really affect me. All the way to the train station I tried searching for any stores that sell masks as I didn’t have many at the time. But to my disappointment, they all ran out of stock. The only store that still sells them had a long, long queue in front of it, so I didn’t opt to stop by. Fortunately, the mart inside the station still had them. I could only buy for 5 pcs though as they started to limit the maximum purchase quantity. I was glad I still could have them with a reasonable price. It did sound scary when I overheard that some people are starting to sell at a very high rate.
The whole day was mind-blowing. The news announcement was just released a few hours ago and we were already in an instant chaos. I also didn’t expect that it would continue until quite a long time.
Probably similar to most people out there, I spent almost the whole of the second quarter of 2020 visiting this site. I was also very diligent informing the whole people in the house about how many cases there are each day.
I kept on doing that until I realized something.
My family and I were starting to worry more than ever about our health. Some of us began to feel pain in our arms and back. At night, we also often had insomnia.
Not wanting this to go any further, we decided to do a check-up in the hospital.
The result came out and it said ‘we are totally fine’. Nothing was odd within our bodies. At last, the doctor asked us what recent routines we have. So, I did give her the honest answer. She then concluded that we are actually experiencing the side-effects of consuming too much news. We got so overwhelmed with the pandemic news here and there, that’s why our bodies reacted so. It was creating an illusion as if we were one of the patients. It was all due to the anxiety we had everyday.
I thanked the doctor and went back home with a new resolution.
I realized that it wasn’t a good habit of mine to always dwell on this hard situation. I somehow needed to divert my attention to something else, to other activities that would release a good energy to keep me going. Thus, I came up with these things:
Cooking
Cooking is actually just my usual self at home. But since the pandemic started, I found myself searching a lot of new recipes on YouTube very often. From appetizer, main course, to dessert — I think I’ve tried them all.
Actually, the part that attracts me the most whenever I watch cooking tutorials is how the ‘YouTubers’ set up their whole kitchen, utensils, and also the ingredients of the food they are going to make. The way they shoot the cooking process in every angle really fascinates me! Some of them probably don’t know much about creating videos in the first place, yet they are still able to make a good one in their own style.
It then made me take up the challenge as well. I just went bare minimum — relied on the equipment that’s available at home, recorded it, did some little editing, and published it. That’s too bad, this YouTube thingy couldn’t last very long. I don’t feel motivated anymore to continue it after uploading 2–3 videos. Yet I decided to keep them in my channel, for future use, maybe.
Illustration and Handcrafts
I remember the old me 5 years ago once saying “I really hate art. It’s troublesome. Definitely won’t be something I want to do in the future” and boy, I was wrong. Right the year after, my father asked me to make him a poster for his event since the one who’s usually in charge wasn’t available. From that time onwards, I started digging more into this industry — the art and design industry. I tried graphic design a lot back then and starting from 2020, I switched to illustration and fanart where I basically draw existing characters most of the time.
I then tried something new again. I remembered having piles of unused and worn papers in my room, so I decided to recycle them into handmade papers. I used mold and a deckle to make it. The whole process was fun and the result came out prettier than I expected.
There are still many types of art I want to try out though, for instance typography art. I never knew that doing art is actually very healing and able to ease your mind. No wonder some people sign up for art therapy classes.
Freelancing
The said activities above eventually led me to get some job offers. I did some art commissions and also a few of mobile app & web prototyping projects (I happen to be a CS student as well). I couldn’t be more grateful for experiencing all these things.
I also opened my own shop in both e-commerce and print-on-demand site where I can sell a wide range of products out of my illustration or design.
Decorating room
Getting into art indirectly makes me more appreciative of someone else’ works. The amount of hard work and time they put into a single art piece must be a lot! And that brings me to start collecting art prints. Most of the art prints I bought are hung onto my wall as decoration along with my old photos.
Joining communities
Another activity that I did during the pandemic was joining communities and a boot camp program. In mid-September of 2020, I joined a university-based community named Google Developer Student Clubs. Through this community, I was able to meet people coming from various backgrounds yet sharing the same interest in technology. We also hold monthly events such as Talk show, Workshop, Hands-on program, etc. Since this is a university-based club, I have to pass the baton to my juniors very soon.
For the boot camp one, early this year I joined the Bangkit program which is a 6-months intensive program initiated by Google. I was a Machine Learning student there and just graduated a few days ago:’) In this program, I got to meet fellow students across Indonesia, also experts coming from Google and leading tech companies in Indonesia.
I never knew I would do this much in the span of a year. I don’t think I’d have realized it if I didn’t try recalling all of these activities.
The same goes to you.
I bet you also have done your best in conquering this hard situation.
Some of you may not realize it yet. But in the end, I think you have to.
You can try writing down what you’ve done in the past year and see how much you’ve grown through those experiences. Don’t be hard on yourself. It’s totally normal if you don’t feel motivated at times. You can always take a rest. You can always try something new.
The pandemic exists to allow you to do things you’ve probably never thought of before. Consider it a blessing instead of a disaster.
I hope we will never stop taking up on new challenges. Let’s try experiencing a lot of things while we can.
May this pandemic end any time soon.
