During the time this post was published, I had already gone through more than two months of self-isolation in Beijing and would be moving on to a partial break from online work.
My tenth week (March 22-28) marked a change in the routine I set up in the past two months: finally, I was able to “travel” to a nearby national park to see cherry and plum blossoms. Life is blooming outside of my apartment.
Lockdowns, self-isolations, and community quarantines are the reality now in many places in the world, and social media is good at documenting all struggles, lamentations, criticisms, recovery stories, confusion, fake news–essentially everything we all face during the coronavirus pandemic.
I almost forgot about the Blogging from A to Z Challenge this year; it is understandable, given the stressful circumstances nowadays. Before deciding to join the 2020 edition, I had been thinking of (and regretting) the reasons why I did not document my self-isolation during the peak of the pandemic in China. I don’t want to be hard on myself of course, but it was just that being cooped up at home and avoiding people had sunk me into indolence, which further strained my creativity, induced self-pity, and caused anger. Not only when I moved on into pandemic Week 4, when I needed to submit articles for my work, that I was able to rise again and gasp, “OK, there’s no sense in staying like this…”
It is never too late though. The emotions are still fresh and, thanks to my weekly work diary, I can access the mental reservoir of my experiences producing several feature-length articles for my work.
And so, the blogging challenge is my best chance to work on my Pandemic Journal in Beijing.
Why is that?
I saw this on Facebook…
…which made me more curious, and found this article:
It strengthened my previous thought of recording experiences during this pandemic is a cathartic way to navigate these uncertain times. Others have already been doing that, in the form of vlogs, tweets, TikToks, or grams on social media, or through artistic forms such as writing letters or painting.
My decision to publish my Pandemic Diary in Beijing is also inspired by the principal of the school where I work. He has written the entire school community letters and updates about our school’s measures to manage the pandemic, and such messages radiate reassurance, practicality, and enlightening leadership that everyone elsewhere needs nowadays.
Sure, there are so many contents being shared on the internet about the pandemic and many people are getting sick and tired (ooops, forgive the pun again!) of reading these. I am aware of that. Take the episodes that I will be sharing soon with a grain of salt; they are meant to chronicle the actions I have taken to get through during this extraordinary time, my generation’s biggest challenge. Because what we do today will be part of history.
Photos: Andy Penafuerte III
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This is a great theme for this year’s challenge. Self-isolation is just beginning for us here in the U.S. Any tips or advise for dealing with are badly needed!
I hope the upcoming entries will give you some ideas of what I had experienced in the first few weeks of the outbreak! Things are so different outside of China, but there are still parallels.