My Covid Experience

The world has changed into an unexpected plethora of things that I had not expected to experience during my lifetime. At first, many did not believe that the pandemic would become a serious issue and so did I. Then the schools shut down and I realized that this disease was really something serious. Since then, masks have become an integral part of our society and will most likely stick around in some form or another. People have become a lot more wary towards the mention of any kind of sickness and medical testing kits may become more convenient and easier to use. Before, being sick did not mean that one had to refrain from society. However, now our minds shift towards social distancing and quarantining for 10 days. Social distancing has also become ingrained into our consciousness because after practicing it for so long, I can still see people not being as friendly or close to one another in parties, parks, family gatherings in and out of my community. However, the pandemic also helped me find new alternatives and modifications to my normal activities that I could do to retain a somewhat normal lifestyle. For example, instead of playing tennis with friends, I would hit the ball on the bricks above the garage repeatedly and sometimes against the garage if my parents weren't home. I became heavily invested in new cooking recipes and movie watching and found a lot of home workouts that I could do outside or inside due to gyms being closed.

Sometimes, to replace the fact that I was by myself, I would pretend that I was playing basketball against myself by practicing certain moves and skills that I would use on others but instead pretended that I or someone else was guarding me. Biking and running, preferably hill running, would take up most of my other time as I ironically was becoming more of an outdoors person given the fact that most places outside of my home were closed. The only option that still allowed me to be in touch with my friends was video games. I assume this was most teens' go-to mode of enjoyment during these times, but I did not have a personal computer, an Xbox, or PlayStation at my home, so I resorted to online computer games. Despite my good structure I had many issues in the online setting: there were many distractions in my house, I frequently got very bored, and I had many technical difficulties as a result of the internet cutting out.