On January 21, 2020 the United States confirmed its first COVID-19 case. It’s hard to believe that it has been a year since the beginning of so much death for so many people. While the anniversary of our first case has come and gone, unfortunately, this illness has not.

In many ways this year has felt extremely long. As a natural hermit and introvert, I’ll admit, the shutting down of everyday life didn’t affect me much. Other than poorly adjusting to online school here at USAO, my life didn’t change. I only ever went three places anyway so I could handle a couple of months of having to avoid people; I even had the audacity to be a little bit excited. Social obligations tend to stress me out and a country-wide break didn’t sound half bad.

Now I won’t delve into all the past events of 2020. You were there and I’m sure you don’t want to relive the traumas the last year inflicted upon us. However, I want to discuss where we are now.

Personally, I am at the point where I have this sense of inescapable boredom. I believe there are two different types of boredom a person can experience. There is the normal boredom that resolves itself eventually when you find a task to do, a movie to watch, or someone to talk to. Then there is the boredom that doesn’t go away. Whether I’m at work, with my significant other, playing a game, or really anything nowadays, nothing really interests me.

I find myself wishing to go places now, I want to meet people and experience life but can’t just yet. As stated before, I was never the biggest social butterfly before all this, and it has gotten to the point where even I miss public events.

There is a mental list of things I want to do and as that list gets longer, the more dissatisfied with the current state of living I become. Due to other political events in 2020, I had cut off my old friends completely and often wish for friends my age now. As many of us students are aware, making friends is extremely difficult when your classes are online and, in many cases, students also have work to balance as well.

My main hope is the vaccine distribution makes being out a little safer. I hear both arguments about whether we can get back to a sense of normalcy or not. In the beginning of all this, I thought we would have to be cautious for a couple of months and it would pass. Now I’m at a place where I do not care what tracking devices are in the vaccine. It could make me grow another nose in the middle of my forehead and I would take it if it meant I could go to a concert again.

I do not know what to do with the feeling that something drastic needs to change in my life, but I am chalking it up to social boredom. It is safe to say all of us are feeling a little uninspired and unmotivated and I have no solution for it. If I did, I would have revealed it by now and saved time.

I will leave us with a tiny thought that doesn’t help but keeps me from doing something crazy like set a tree on fire in times like this. This time in our lives will end. It will end just as everything else does. It may take another year, but we will get our fun back. And when that time comes, I want to be ready. I want to be able to dive headfirst into what it means to be alive.
My goals are to experience as much as I possibly can. Before the pandemic I wanted to travel and go to concerts and festivals but didn’t because I was cheap and had social anxiety. An entire year of not being able to do these things has pushed me into a deep desire to live happily.

No matter what it entails, no matter how weird, if I have to do it alone, none of it will stop me now. I am an adult. I pay my own way through this life and I take care of those I care about. Now it’s time to take care of me. It’s time for you to take care of you. We may not be able to do all the amazing things or see the beautiful sights we want to see, but we will eventually. My little sliver of hope is to use this time to get to know myself. Not in the dark, “I’m finally alone and experiencing my mental illnesses for the first time with nothing to stimulate the feelings” way, but in a “I am slowly learning what in this life brings actual joy to me and I’m ready to embrace parts of me I’ve hidden out of fear.”

When this time of isolation passes, embrace the world. We’re all missing it. Don’t just fall into the day-after-day routine of work, school, home, small group of friends. We have our lives ahead of us and countless places we have never seen. Go enjoy it. I hope to see you there.

Raven Gray is a Communication Major at USAO.