Pandemic Thoughts

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Pandemic Thoughts

A sequel to Quarantine Thoughts, this hand-lettered series explores the ways our minds process the realities of living in the midst of a pandemic, and how prolonged restrictions, social isolation and uncertainty affect our thoughts. Some of these thoughts are silly and seemingly trivial, whereas some of them are more existential. All of them come from a highly personal place reflecting my own experience, though they may certainly overlap with others’.

January 2021

Every day that my allergies act up. Every morning that i wake up with a dry throat. The first place my mind goes is: “It’s covid”. Never mind that our bodies did these things as well pre-pandemic. It’s not a rational reaction: It’s just a result of our collective lives currently revolving around not catching and spreading this one specific virus. I can’t wait to sneeze and cough worry-free again!

January 2021

Many freelance creatives – myself included – are struggling right now, with less work coming in as the economy slows down, and with strategising and planning made difficult through every new wave of lockdowns. This thought is also connected to the ways many governments are currently failing artists and freelancers, omitting to financially help or consider us in their relief plans. For example in Spain, freelancers continue to have to pay exorbitant, fixed monthly social security fees, some of them as high as people’s rents – and this is regardless of whether we earned anything at all that month. Sometimes it feels warranted/rational to worry about my career on the long term this way, and sometimes it doesn’t. I think overall it’s my mind catastrophising in response to the fact that we don’t really know what the world will look like in a few months, or how the economy is going to change on the long term.

January 2021

Who would have thought that having a limited social life and little work could lead to a feeling akin to burnout? Burnout is an emotional, physical and mental state linked to prolonged feelings of exhaustion and stress. Up until last year, I only really thought of it in relation to being overworked, but now I’m thinking that the stress that comes from not having enough work/new income, from worrying about the health of loved ones, and from the unpredictable state of the world can lead your body and mind to the same place.

February 2021

I’ve gone up 2 sizes this past year, what with all the extra time spent at home, moving less, and enjoying delicious foods. There’s nothing wrong with changing sizes – both during and outside of a pandemic – it’s just our bodies working as they do. It does, however, mean that all my clothes that aren’t sweatpants and oversized shirts are seriously uncomfortable right now.

February 2021

You would think that with all this extra time on my hands, my apartment would be sparkling clean and my life in complete order. But somehow more time to do things correlates with less ability to actually do them! The more this pandemic drags on, the harder it’s been to find the energy to do basic tasks: Opening the mail, vacuuming & folding laundry all require more energy than they used to. But this also applies on the creative and work side of things: Last spring, my survival mechanism kicked in and I went into hyper productive mode, pumping out a million patterns, mapping out new career strategies and working non stop on my web and social media presence for visibility. But as the months dragged on and new restrictions and obstacles crept up, that motivation faded and made way to inspiration block, and feeling little overall motivation to create.

February 2021

Throughout the past year, I’ve found myself envious not just of people but of entire countries: For their low case numbers, their competent governments, or the ways some of them have been able to lead relatively ‘normal’ lives while the rest of us were stuck at home. Pretty consistently New Zealand and Taiwan have been top of the list, but now with the vaccine rollout some unexpected and surprising contenders have crept up, like the UK and US. I realize it’s pretty short-sighted to think this way, given how lucky I’ve been throughout this whole thing, and because ultimately no one has had an easy time this past year – even those in “lucky” countries. But even more so when taking into account the fact that the vaccine ‘wait’ I’m impatient about doesn’t even compare to how long other countries will have to wait: Richer, powerful nations like my own are hoarding vaccines at the expense of others, often times nations which have done a much better job – and made many more sacrifices – at containing the virus.

March 2021

When I watch movies and TV shows now my mind worries (for a split second) when two characters are standing too close, let alone touching. And don’t get me started on party scenes, those are now stressful to watch: All these people in one room, breathing the same air! Rationally though, I know it makes no sense: Most of these scenes were filmed prior to the pandemic. But we’ve so deeply engrained this notion of staying socially distanced that my subconscious kicks in and immediately worries on behalf of these characters. I wonder how long it’ll take, once this is all over, for that reflex to go away.

April 2021

It’s like Groundhog Day except it’s boring and there are consequences for our actions. What my time loop looks like: Wake up. Work all day from home. Go on an uneventful but necessary walk. Make dinner. Clean up. Netflix. Go to sleep. Repeat.

April 2021

Having crushes on fictional characters (in books, tv shows, movies etc.) isn’t unique to this pandemic, but this past year, what with a lack of a social and dating life, I noticed I’m way more emotionally invested in the storylines and characters of the series I watch – and as a result I pretty much collect a new made-up crush each time.

May 2021

All that time spent indoors, worrying, getting less sun and moving less has given me whatever the opposite is of a summer glow. I’ve spoken to a few other friends who feel the same, down to the way our skin feels less fresh and healthy, and it’s weird as things open up again for summer to enter the world feeling so off about ourselves. I realize all these ideas of beauty are made-up, and based around ageist, fatphobic, ableist, racist and sexist standards. But as much as we can look at our friends and others and think they’re as lovely as ever, it can be a struggle to direct that same kinder outlook on ourselves.

July 2021

While I was in California this summer for work, I took advantage of their vaccine program to get vaccinated against covid. Spain wasn’t far behind with its own rollout, but I did feel lucky/happy/grateful to have gotten it done a little ahead of time, and to be better protected from serious infection. That being said, I also felt conflicted, knowing that the only reason I had access to a vaccine this early on was because I had the privilege to live in and travel to countries that had hoarded vaccines at the expense of others. It makes no sense that someone like myself, who is young, healthy and works from home, would get protected before any number of frontline workers and at-risk people around the world.

It was heartbreaking and perverse to see what had been happening in other countries, while so many folks in parts of the Global North have enjoyed freedoms only afforded to the vaccinated. I strongly believe that if our government leaders worked based on ethics rather than local electability and greed, we would have gotten rid of vaccine patents long ago and production of doses would have been encouraged, shared and exported worldwide. For this reason, my take on “vaxxed & waxed” is a little more complicated and a little less catchy

September 2021

When the lockdowns first began, I remember feeling grateful to be an introvert because I thought that my tendency to opt for lots of alone time helped prepare me for prolonged isolation. I was more so worried for my extroverted friends, who tend to need social interactions to feel recharged and well. Turns out, many of them not only coped with the long-term isolation better than I did, but actually started adopting introverted tendencies themselves: Nowadays, when we hang out at night, I’m no longer the default first person to go home for need of some decompressing/alone time before going to sleep. It feels like prolonged social isolation and distancing has made many of us slide further along the introverted end of the socializing spectrum, but the change feels especially noticeable in people who I’d previously have thought of as fully extroverted.

November 2021

I thought that when the worst of this pandemic had passed, I’d feel relieved, excited and alive, but instead I’ve been feeling anxious, sad, and down on myself. The strange thing is that feeling like this seems at odds with how things around me, at least in Spain, are changing for the better: I’m seeing friends more, the city has come back to life, and almost all restrictions are gone. It should feel like a weight has been lifted. But maybe that’s just it, and the pressure to suddenly be better, to suddenly snap back to life after surviving the past year and a half+, is what’s exacerbating the very real heaviness we’ve been carrying with us this whole time.