Sarah
Day 1–March 18
Social Distancing
My name is Sarah Webster and I’m in my second year of journalism studies at Sheridan College. I’m a friendly, creative, down to earth, and passionate person. I have many goals in my life such as going sky diving and visiting the UK and Europe. My main goal is to make it in the world of editing for film and television. This blog captures my experience for 12 days during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020.
Social distancing is interesting. In the past, I would do this by choice. I was very shy, quiet, and terrified of people all the way up until a month into the Journalism program. I would stay at home and stare at my computer or phone for hours. Editing videos, scrolling through Instagram, and online shopping. Now that social distancing is being highly recommended, I’m finding it hard to just stay home. My thoughts are now wanting to do things I can no longer do. I became more of a people person throughout my time at school. I wish I was at school with my friends. I want to be outside, even though it’s cold. I was supposed to film for an assignment for sports broadcasting this week in Toronto. I was looking forward to filming, editing and potentially having it as a portfolio item. Given everything going on now, that is something I won’t have. It’s disappointing, but it’s beyond anyone’s control.
My experience with the current pandemic so far has included editing photos, eating, hanging out with my dog and cat, and watching a lot of TV and movies with my family. It’s felt so weird sleeping in because I’ve gotten so used to waking up at 4:50 a.m. almost every morning to arrive at school by 7:00 a.m. I had a bus commute that included a half-hour walk, and 3 buses that take about an hour to an hour and a half, depending on my timing. Now I’m staying with my dad, stepmom, and stepsister because I wanted a change of scenery as well as a quieter place to focus. I’ve also been receiving and sending emails to find out the next steps for each of my classes. I wrote myself a checklist of what I need to get done for each of my classes, so I don’t get too overwhelmed. This is also the most I’ve read and kept up with the news and watched live broadcasts. I’ve been going through all the Twitter trends as well. I have been on Twitter more in the last week than I have been in the last two years.
I’ve had moments where I feel productive and ready to get work done. For example, today, I began to put things on my new website. Mainly photos, videos, and my written works. I’m using these for my portfolio for both one of my final assignments and for the future. I’m starting out small, and then once I get the hang of it all, I plan to add more. I never really thought about how long the process is with creating a website. There was so much I had to think about. I knew I wanted a clean and simple theme for my website. It was a matter of what I wanted, where I wanted everything to go, and how I wanted it to look. I wanted it to look like a website that I would click on. I’m enjoying this process. I’m hoping to keep it up and have it look the best it can be. On top of that, my dad also helped me file my taxes so it would be one less thing for me to think about.
Then other times, I’ve had times where I feel lazy and unwilling to do anything except for sitting around and doing nothing. I would just continuously scroll through my Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I even sat down with my stepsister to figure out what else we can do while socially distancing ourselves. Things such as baking, walk on a trail and take photos, go on a late-night drive, and play board games.
At dinner today, my dad, stepmom, stepsister, and I were discussing the importance of parents talking about their past mistakes with their kids. It really made me think how I can do the same thing in the future. Especially with the current pandemic happening. For me, I thought about how panicking about what’s going to happen with the rest of my schooling could be something I explain to my future kids. I can talk about how I needed to take it one step at a time rather than freaking out towards someone who knows as little as I do about everything happening. At the same time, I want to tell my future kids that it’s okay to feel worried or scared about things or events that could affect their future.
My hope for everything going on is to just keep taking it one step at a time. Throughout my time socially distancing, I’ve had so many emotions. Overwhelmed, worried, confused, and sad. I feel alone right now being indoors. I want everything to slow down. I wish I was at school, with my friends, and learning. The idea of a regular week at school being my final week at school for journalism didn’t cross my mind. In my TV News Production class, I never thought that would be the final broadcast my class would do. Then the last time seeing my friends and classmates in a school environment was to talk about what was going to happen with the rest of our program. Thinking about all of this breaks my heart. This made me quickly learn that I have to appreciate and embrace everything that’s in front of me.
I’m also feeling hopeful. I’m hopeful because even though there’s so much going on, I want to see how everything goes. I want to see recovery with all of this. I may have a lot of questions and not know what’s going to happen next, but I have hope.
Day 2-March 19
Sleepy
I’m feeling so sleepy today. I’m starting to see the couch I’m sitting on as a second home. I woke up, played on my Nintendo Switch for a little while, then went into the family room carrying my phone, laptop, and notebook with my checklist in it and went straight for the couch. The TV was on and it was a mixture of Modern Family and Big Bang Theory. As I was typing away on my laptop, my dad asked me how everything was coming in terms of schoolwork. He’s also been sitting in the family room a lot of the day, so he sees that I’ve been on my laptop almost all day. I told him that there’s some moments where it feels like I don’t have too much to do. Then there’s other times where it feels like it’s never ending because it may not look like much, but each assignment I have left requires a lot of work as well as they’re worth a lot towards my final grade. It’s times like these where I miss being able to just hop on the bus and stay at school all day. I could just go to the library or sit in the editing room which is in the same area as some of my journalism classrooms. I would put on my noise cancelling headphones and go straight to work.
I also left the house today. It wasn’t for a long time, but it felt nice to just get outside. My dad and I took our dog Oreo out for a walk. Before leaving our street, we bumped into someone my Dad works with and they spoke for a few minutes. One thing that stood out to me that my dad’s colleague said in relation to the pandemic was that he was either going to die from the virus or that his kids were going to kill him. Him and my dad laughed at the comment before parting ways. It made me think that if everyone is socially distancing, self-isolating or quarantining, is everyone going to drive each other crazy? I’m hoping it doesn’t come down to that.
We also did an order for pick up at Tim Hortons during our walk. My dad told me when he came back out with our drinks and food that they took out all the tables and chairs. The thought of an empty Tim Hortons is weird. Normally a popular food chain is full of people and can be loud. We then made our way back to the house. I went right back to the same couch I was sitting on before.
The rest of the day has been watching more TV. My stepmom and stepsister also ordered a game called Escape Room the Game on Amazon Prime today, so we have something to do while staying at home. I’m looking forward to trying it out. It’s been nice hanging out with my family in general and coming up with new ways to not be bored inside all day. I’m hoping all of my social distancing brings me closer to my family during these stressful times.
Day 3-March 20
Cautious
Today was another quiet day. I played some Tetris, watched Big Bang Theory on TV, and snuggled with my dog. I didn’t do a lot of work today. The morning and most of the afternoon went by pretty quickly. Eventually, my dad drove me back to my mom’s house. During the drive back, my dad and I were talking about how crazy it was seeing the gas prices so low. My dad also stated that he also hasn’t needed gas over the last week because of all our social distancing. I knew my mom and the rest of my family were social distancing. They were also only going one person at a time to the grocery store to get necessities, so I felt okay coming back home after social distancing at my dad’s house for a week.
I also have to go to work this weekend. I work at a grocery store. I feel a lot of pressure going in for my upcoming shift because a lot of non-essential places have shut down and knowing my work is one of few places that is still open and isn’t going to close is crazy to me. I’ve been made aware that they are reducing hours as well as having an hour before the store opens for the elderly to shop and an hour after the store closes for employees and colleagues to get anything they may need. I also read that plexi-glass shields are being installed for the cashiers and pharmacies. My plan in general with going to work this weekend is to just stay calm but be cautious. Not getting too close to people and keeping myself clean. I feel a little nervous going in as well, but I have things that I pay for by myself such as my phone and Wi-Fi.
I also have a lot of assignments to complete for school. Since everything has officially moved to online, I’m properly starting to think and plan when to do each assignment. I have a rule that I followed almost every time I did any schoolwork. Do what’s due first. I do this so I never have to worry about potentially missing a deadline. On top of this, now that I’m back at my mom’s house, I’m now thinking about how I want to entertain myself when I’m not working on assignments. My current ideas include a lot of binging movies and TV on Netflix, Disney Plus, and Crave, audio books, and maybe going for some walks.
I was talking to my mom after dinner this evening about how quickly the numbers were going up with people getting COVID-19. I think what freaks me out more is how many more cases are probably unknown because people aren’t showing any symptoms or people aren’t able to get tested. I’m desperately hoping people are taking care of themselves through all of this.
It’s times like these where I hope more people start to take this pandemic seriously. EB Games was trending on Twitter earlier because the new Animal Crossing game just came out. I saw photos of people lined up outside the store waiting to get the game. Seeing this bothered me. I understand the excitement of a new game, but the game is also available digitally and people should not be in a crowded line up. We were told to avoid going to places with large crowds of more than 50 people. There are still people out there who are putting other people in danger because they are choosing to not socially distance or self-isolate. I wish more people would understand that they’re also putting themselves at risk with not taking this global pandemic seriously.
Day 4-March 21
Dragged On
Today felt like it dragged on for me. I woke up at 6:30 a.m. but I hit snooze until 7 a.m. I got myself out of bed, got ready for work, and then my mom woke up shortly after and drove me to work. When I walked in, there were handwashing machines in the lobbies of the store, and a person at each entrance keeping track of how many people were walking in and out of the store. My store is currently only letting a certain amount of people in at one time. I work in the bakery department. What I specifically do in the bakery is called Tray Up. I look at a list of things that are needed for the next day written by the baker. I get that product from the freezer and put them onto trays. I put those trays onto large racks and put them into a proofer or the fridge, depending on the product. Then they’re all good to go for the next day when the baker has to put them in the oven and bake them. The rest of the day was boring and went by slow. I saw a lot of people wearing masks and gloves throughout the day. Both customers and employees. I was even told by one of my co-workers that some of the younger employees in our department are being told not to come into work by their parents. I’m really hoping all of this slows down soon, but I can’t get my hopes up. I also heard that we’re getting a temporary wage raise of $2.00 which will go until April 30th and we will get a little extra for whenever we worked between March 8th to now.
I’m now home from work and I’m exhausted. I just want to get into bed early and just watch videos on my phone until I fall asleep. I tend to do this very often. I get stressed out and anxious a lot so watching videos keeps me calm. Especially with what’s happening around the world right now. The world is a scary place. It doesn’t feel normal right now. There were barely any cars on the road on the way home. Seeing the gas prices so low is something I haven’t gotten used to seeing yet. I also have a lot to do over the next two weeks assignment wise. I’m working hard to make sure I can get everything complete to the best of my ability, and on time.
My hopes and wishes with everything going on right now is taking it one day at a time. I plan to take it easy on myself as well as take it easy on the people around me. I also had a thought earlier today that what’s happening to all of us right now could potentially be in a school textbook in the years to come. Talking about the amount of cases, deaths, countries it affected, and even the panic shopping. So much has happened since this pandemic started up and I have a feeling that more is yet to come.
Day 5-March 22
Relief
I’ve just had a sigh of relief. After another full day of work, it feels good to be done for the weekend. I can now use this upcoming week to be productive with school and hopefully take some photos for my photography.
I was talking with one of my co-workers earlier today about everything going on around the world. Just saying that we’re both hoping that all the social distancing and self-isolation doesn’t last too much longer. I personally have the gut feeling that society is going to be social distancing for quite a while. I don’t see my 12-year-old sister going back to school to finish her year. I can see her doing the remainder of her schooling online. She normally hands in some of her assignments online through Google Classroom. But to have the rest of her school year online would be so different for both her and everyone we live with. Although she’s currently at an age where she doesn’t want to go to school, she also wants this pandemic to end soon.
Even though I can’t physically go to school right now, I still find myself going to bed somewhat early. My body and brain are so used to going to bed earlier so I can physically and mentally wake up early. I still wake up pretty early. I just have to remind myself that I’m not waking up at 4:50 a.m. anymore and I can sleep in a little bit. I eventually wake up at a reasonable time, so I don’t waste my day away in bed, even though I really want to sometimes. I’m also woken up to either brightness through my window because I have a large window above where my blinds are or my four-year-old sister just walking in and crawling into my bed.
I’ve also witnessed how everything is affecting my two youngest siblings. They can’ go to daycare so they have to stay home. They have a lot of energy so staying inside almost all day is hard for them. On weekends at least, they’re usually taken to a park or to a free event nearby. Now that almost everything that’s considered non-essential is closed and playgrounds are not recommended right now, they’re getting a little restless. My sister has even asked if they can go on a walk soon. I’ll probably take her on one when I take any breaks from my schoolwork.
I feel so tired. I keep going onto Twitter and the news in hopes of seeing anything good. Almost everything I’ve seen lately on my Twitter is related to COVID-19. A crazy thought I had is that even when all of this does eventually die down, everyone may still be feeling paranoid, scared, or confused. Not sure if it’ll be done or if it will come back. I know that’s exactly how I will feel.
Day 6-March 23
Virtual
Today I was back at it with doing everything online. I always used to hate Mondays growing up, but now I like them. It reminds me that I have the opportunity to start fresh since it’s the start of a new week. I was able to be productive today compared to how I was feeling over the weekend. I started my day by spending some time with my youngest sister and brother. I got myself a snack and sat with them on the couch and watched their kid shows. I thought about how they don’t fully understand what’s been going on lately. My sister isn’t used to me being home on Mondays. She asked me if I was going to school today. I told her that my school was closed. Trying to explain to a 4-year-old the exact reason why I’m at home is proving to be difficult. She loves when I’m at home but gets confused when I’m there when I’m usually at school or work. She’s used to routine so her seeing any change to anything going on around her can be overwhelming to her.
I eventually went up to my room and was ready to get some schoolwork done. The first thing I did was log into a virtual classroom two of my teachers were holding for one of my classes. It felt so different seeing and hearing my classmates and teachers talking about our class and future plans for it but not at school. Everyone was at home. It really made me appreciate the in-class and hands-on experience I was able to have in the past while being in Journalism. I then began to write for one of my assignments. It’s for my field placement class. I have to write three different diary entries.
When this assignment was first assigned, I pitched a specific idea that I thought would be different and fun to my teacher and she liked the idea. The three diary entries include talking about the past and looking back on my last two years in Journalism, as well as what’s going on right now and how the pandemic is affecting me, and then the future, where I see myself in five years and what my hopes are for the world. I wrote for the past today and I felt relieved to be able to talk in full about my Journalism experiences. It made me realize how much I’m going to miss this program and everyone in it. It also made me sad because my last few weeks were taken away from me because of the pandemic. I’m really hoping I can make the most of what I still have school wise.
After working on school, I took a little break from writing and took a walk to check the mail. It was a mixture of rain and snow. It was also a little cold. I don’t like any of that weather. It made me feel a bit down since the first day of spring was a couple days ago. Minus a garbage truck, it was pretty quiet outside today. Shortly after that, I came home, got a small snack, then went back to my room to write some more. I sometimes feel like I’m writing the same thing over and over again, but once I get into the groove of it and focus, I can usually figure out something different to write. Once all of my schoolwork is complete, I’m planning to get back into some creative writing and potentially teach myself how to write and format a script for a fiction podcast I’ve been thinking about for over a year.
With everything happening right now, I sometimes have a hard time being positive. I sometimes get anxious and question how long this pandemic is really going to last. How long am I going to have to socially distance myself? I have no choice but to take it day by day.
Day 7-March 24
Progress
Today was a back and forth day between schoolwork and taking time to myself. I still saw progress by the end of the day. My morning started with me getting something to eat and watching TV with my brother and sister.
I enjoy spending as much time as I can with them because they’re so young. I’m 18 years older than my youngest sister and 21 years older than my brother. There was a lot of laughing. I always try to set a good example for all of my siblings, even for the little things such as saying please and thank you. With the current pandemic, I try to stay calm around them because I don’t want my stressed-out emotions to bounce off of them. I’m trying hard to keep them happy, even though they have to stay home. I read somewhere earlier today that it’s not looking likely that elementary and high schools are going to open back up on April 6 like it was planned. Seeing this made me think of my 12-year-old sister who feels like she’s in the dark with everything going on in the world and the pandemic. She has the same questions as me. She wonders when all of this is really going to end.
I later went upstairs to fold some laundry. For a few years now, I’ve found folding laundry therapeutic. I never knew why in the past, but now I think it’s the motion between my hands and the clothing. I also did this while listening to one of my favourite artists, Taylor Swift. I was able to sing and dance around a little bit without any fear of judgement. I then put away all the clothes and went into my room to play Pokémon Sword on my Nintendo Switch. It’s probably one of my favourite purchases. I bought both the game and the console back in November 2019. It came to a surprise to some of my friends when I told them because they didn’t expect me to suddenly spend almost $300. That memory makes me laugh. I miss those simpler times before the current pandemic came around. I still play my games, but it makes me feel a little lonely sometimes that I can’t play in the company of my friends.
I also finally published the website I’ve been working on. I feel very happy about it. Hard work pays off. It started off as wiping everything off the original website. Then I took many days picking a bunch of photos, then editing them. Then I had to go through those photos again and decide which ones will look the best on my website. This website is both for an assignment for one of my classes and for myself. Now that I have a theme and design that I like, I’m hoping to continue working on my website and adding more to it as time goes on. My only other plans for the rest of my evening are to watch the movie Princess Mononoke. I need to watch it for another one of my classes and then write a film review on it afterwards. It’s a two-hour movie so I hope I’ll like it.
When I finish all of my schoolwork, I have a feeling I’m going to have a lot more time on my hands since I’ll only be leaving my house for work or a walk. I plan to continue social distancing until everything starts to slow down.
Day 8-March 25
Lazy
Today I’ve felt very lazy. I didn’t feel motivated to do anything. Even with the easiest of tasks like getting out of bed. I eventually woke up, got dressed, and went downstairs. I sat down with my sister on the couch as I had something to eat. She then asked if I could stay with her and watch a movie. She wanted to watch what she calls the dinosaur movie. I know she means Jurassic Park. It’s a lot of fun watching small children going through different phases and seeing all the different things they like during these phases. Her current phase is dinosaurs, asking for the time, and asking me questions that have all the Ws. I love seeing her grow. Lately, it’s getting hard because of the stress of the global pandemic. She asked me again this morning if I was going to school. I had to tell her again that my school was closed. I have a feeling that what’s going on right now is something that I would have to explain to her more in depth when she gets older. I can tell her how it’s affected her, me, and the rest of our family.
It wasn’t until later in the afternoon when I decided to head back to my room and work on a film review for my class Villains in Film and Literature. We had to watch the movie Princess Mononoke. I watched it last night and I enjoyed it. There were only a few parts I didn’t like because they visually freaked me out. I started by separately writing out the points I wanted to make. It then took me forever to actually find the motivation to write. It felt like my brain wasn’t working. I finally got it done with the help of putting on my noise cancelling headphones and listening to some study music that a friend showed me a few weeks ago on YouTube. Part of me thinks it’s because I was looking forward to doing this assignment the least out of all the assignments that I have due. Another part of me believes it’s because all the social distancing I’ve been doing has started to take a toll on me. I’m being hit with moments of wishing I was back at school with my friends and teachers. It’s Wednesday today which means there was supposed to be another Sheridan Now broadcast. I miss doing that show and the adrenaline of it all.
I’ve also had moments of annoyance with the current pandemic. A lot of the time I find myself wishing none of this ever happened. I wish it wasn’t affecting the world the way it is right now. I wish I wasn’t so affected by it in terms of my school, seeing my friends, and the bit of pressure I’ve felt knowing that where I work is very essential right now. I need to take a deep breath and remember that there’s only so much I can do right now. I can take care of myself and do my part to make sure the virus doesn’t spread any more than it already has.
Day 9-March 26
Another Day
Today just felt like another day. I didn’t do anything too special. I woke up at 7:00 a.m. and just stayed in my bed until around 9:00 a.m. I watched two episodes of Pokémon online and then I finally decided to get out of bed, get dressed, and go downstairs. The rest of my morning consisted of having cream cheese on toast and watching the movie Monster House with my siblings.
I felt like I was non-stop snacking on small amounts of food for hours. I hate when I do that, but I sometimes can’t help it. I used to eat so much out of boredom when I was a teenager. It made me think how much this pandemic is starting to affect me. I’m constantly eating and yawning all day, even though I’ve barely done anything. I later found myself watching scary story videos on YouTube with my youngest sister. I have no idea how these videos don’t freak her out. She finds joy in watching them. While the videos were playing, I started thinking more about graduating college, which also made me think of how much I’ve changed over the last 23 years of my life.
In order – Kindergarten, Age: 5. Grade 8, Age: 13. Grade 12, Age: 17. College, Age: 23
I went around my house and looked at all of my past graduation photos. It really made me think about how much my thought process has changed since I was younger in terms of what I wanted for my life. When I was five, I just wanted to run around and play with my friends. At 13, I was set on wanting to own my own daycare centre with my best friend who wanted the same thing at the time. Then when I was 17, I wasn’t completely sure what I wanted anymore. I assumed I was still cut out for working with kids because I was told by a lot of people that I was good with their kids. I had my hobby of editing videos for a few years at this point in my life, but it never crossed my mind to have that as a career, even though my Dad told me it could be something to think about. I dropped out of the Early Childhood Education program and took the time to decide what I wanted. Fast forward to 2017 and I was set for the Journalism program. I was going to apply for Fall 2017, but I decided to save up some extra money instead and I thought applying in the summer would’ve made me too late. While in Journalism, I was glad I didn’t go in 2017 because I would’ve been affected by the strike that occurred.
I never thought I would be affected by a global pandemic at the age of 23 and doing the rest of my journalism program online. I know there’s only so much I can do right now. I just have to continue keeping myself healthy and safe and hope that my family and friends are doing the same.
Day 10-March 27
Deep Breath
Today I took a deep breath. A lot happened, but most of it wasn’t too exciting. I woke up to some yelling and arguing. Everyone in my house is getting pretty restless. Patience is running thin with everyone. I’ve been restless and impatient because I’m normally a very fidgety person, so forcing myself to sit down for a few hours and work on an assignment that’s worth a lot of my grade can be difficult. At the same time, I at least still have stuff to do, so I can keep myself busy for the day. I can’t say the same for my family. My mom still goes into the office. She works with FED-EX, but she’s still waiting to see if she’ll be working from home soon. My siblings are all getting way more irritable towards each other. More than they usually do. Their dad works from home in the living room, so he has to focus on work and make sure no one kills each other at the same time. I usually go back and forth between my room and the living room to give myself breaks, as well as help out in any way I can. Even if that means sitting beside one of siblings on the couch and they watch me scroll through my phone. I stayed downstairs for some of the morning. Had a quick bite to eat and then I went back upstairs to fold some laundry. Living in a house of six and two of those people are under the age of five means we do laundry at minimum three times a week.
Once I put away all of the clothes, I went back downstairs and watched Finding Nemo with my siblings. Throughout that time, my 12-year-old sister had to go to her first virtual classroom on Google Classroom. When she came back, she said a lot of the meeting was just updates on everything going on. A lot of her classmates believe they won’t be going back to school on April 6 like they’re supposed to. I agree with them. Since some people just got back from trips as well as a lot of non-essential places have shut down, they’ll probably hold off on the schools. I can see it being a never-ending cycle for a while of more cases being discovered and the closures of stores and other places being extended. For example, I saw the other day that the CN Tower extended its closure from its original re-open date of April 14 to May 30.
I eventually went upstairs and decided I had to work on another big assignment. We have to create a 30-minute sports broadcast rundown. Since I’ve never created a rundown by myself before, it was a challenge. It was a learn as I go situation. Working on this assignment made me have a better understanding of what producers and other people who used iNews more frequently went through when doing our broadcasts. It was a learning experience for me. This was an alternate assignment because we were originally supposed to do a mini sports documentary. I was looking forward to doing it because I had a good idea in place. I was supposed to interview a teacher at the College of Sports Media. He teaches students how to edit for sports as well as being a sports editor for Sportsnet.
Doing schoolwork has been keeping me busy, but I will be relieved once I finish it all. I’ll be able to binge movies and TV shows on Netflix and not have to feel guilty while doing it. I will still have to socially distance for however long I need to. I also go back to work tomorrow. I’m hoping people are starting to calm down about panic shopping as well as stop being rude to workers when we only allow a certain amount of people in the store at a time. I hope things in general with this pandemic get better soon.
Day 11-March 28
Slow Day
Today was a slow day. It’s mostly the day itself that went by slowly. I did my usual getting ready for work routine which includes my alarm going off at 6:30 a.m. and then hitting snooze until 7 a.m. I then stayed in bed until around 7:30 a.m. I’m pretty lazy first thing in the morning. I got dressed and hung out downstairs until my mom came down and was ready to drive me to work. As soon as we stepped out of the house, we noticed how quiet it was on our street. We heard the birds chirping as well. It felt really weird.
When I got to work, I noticed a bunch of pylons and tape near the store’s entrance. As I got closer, I saw tape in the shape of lines and arrows on the ground. I figured it was to help make sure people lineup safely outside the doors as well as continue social distancing. It’s so crazy to see all the new procedures at my work. Throughout my shift, there were a lot of laughs with my coworkers. Given everything going on, it was nice to still be able to have a decent day. My hands were so dry by the end of the day because of how often I was washing my hands and putting on hand sanitizer. It was also insane to see how many more people were wearing gloves and masks today compared to when I was working last week. I even saw a man today wearing a full clear mask that went over his head.
After what felt like forever, I was finally done with my shift and my Mom arrived to pick me up. Right before I left, I noticed something else that I didn’t notice in the morning. By the cashiers, there was more tape on the ground so customers could continue social distancing, and there was plexi-glass installed in front of each cashier lane. I kept hearing about them while reading the daily updates for my work but seeing it in person felt so surreal.
While walking to my mom’s car, we talked about how emotionally draining all of this is. We’ve noticed how if we or anyone gets any closer than six feet to someone in front of us, we have a moment of panic. I find it sad that we are at this point right now in the world. It’s sad going on Twitter and seeing how many more cases have been discovered within one day. This pandemic in general has me all over the place.
Day 12-March 29
Rest
It feels nice to know that I can rest for the remainder of my night after my full shift at work today. It was another long, slow, and boring day but more laughs with coworkers. There was a lineup outside the entrance this morning but, since I work there, I was thankfully able to bypass it. I also didn’t take my lunch until after 2 p.m. because my tray-up job kept me busy longer than it usually does. Normally, I’ll do about half of my list and then go on my lunch around noon. I went later today because my list was cut down a lot, so I was able to get more done in a shorter amount of time.
While on my lunch, I spotted a paper that had a variety of different rules we should follow while in the lunchroom. It was crazy to see how even though grocery store workers are putting their health at risk for customers, I’ve seen many workers not following a lot of the social distancing practices. I made sure to keep my distance while on my lunch, but many people were still sitting close to each other. It made me feel disappointed because there’s been so many cases and even some deaths, yet so many people still aren’t taking the pandemic seriously. There’s still so many people choosing to hang around in crowded places. I spent the last hour of shift trying to find something to do because there was nothing left to do. I felt so tempted to ask to leave early, but I didn’t because I know I will need the money. Our wage raise will officially be seen in our next pay stub, which is on April 2nd. On top of that, we also get our lump sum amount included within that pay stub from the March 8-21 pay period. I also qualify for the quarterly GST credits so that comes in later this week. I’m looking forward to it because I’m currently investing in Final Cut Pro X to enhance my editing skills and an Apple TV to replace my Google Chromecast.
After work, my mom picked me up and we drove home. I ate dinner and snuggled with my brother. It’s always nice to see his smiling face after a long day at work. I eventually went upstairs to my bedroom so I could have some time to myself.
This upcoming week shouldn’t be too stressful in terms of school because I only have a few little things to finish for my program that are due part way during the week, and an exam from the elective class I took, but that exam won’t be handed out until next week. I feel annoyed that I have to wait longer just for an exam, but I know I will feel relieved once I finish it. I’m now thinking about how I’m going to feel about the pandemic once I officially finish school. I still plan to practice social distancing, but I wonder if my stress levels will increase or decrease. Only time will tell.
This is the last entry of my social distancing blogs. Writing for 12 days has been interesting because I never thought I could pull it off. I have a diary that I write in at home, but I only write in it when I have the urge to write or when something crazy happens in my life. Writing daily was hard because I felt like I was running out of things to talk about, but it was fun at the same time. I’m hoping that everything with the pandemic calms down soon, but I know I can’t get my hopes up. It’s been a scary ride with all sorts of twists and turns, but I will continue to do my part and try to help flatten the curve.
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