A friend asked me what I would do after all this crisis is over. The question sounded too simple to answer, but the more I think about it, the more I couldn’t find the right words to use, so I gave myself the privilege to think about it long and hard, it is in an entry to HivePH's contest after all.
I think about all the time and resources everyone used up adjusting to this “new normal”: the stupid attempts people have done to secure their own safety by hoarding toilet paper and facemasks in grocery stores [1,2], the stress of working from home, closing down of businesses or losing their job, the difficulty of trying to go back to their hometown in the middle of lockdown or community quarantine [3] , the irrational fear of getting infected [4], and the overwhelming amount of bad news, misinformation and political propaganda in the television and social media [5,6], all the while lying down in my parents’ mattress, with the air conditioning turned on, in my brother’s Sully (a Monsters Inc. character) onesie and sipping from a large mug of my favorite coffee.
One thought popped into my mind after that whole pondering time: Will it matter that much? What will change significantly after this pandemic is over, aside from the given? I will be able to go out more, sure. No more paranoia of getting infected after talking to someone further than a yardstick. I can finally exercise outside without any uncomfortable mask on. However, I will still be continuing my duties as a teacher, I will still be far away from the hustle and bustle of Lapu-lapu city and all its economic zone glory, and I will still be far away from my second family, my pole girls, and my boyfriend.
Things won’t probably change that much since a lot of things have already taken place earlier during the pandemic. However, there are some things that I would still look forward to after all of this is over:
One of the things I really missed ever since the start of the pandemic is freely working out outside. I used to love jogging in the near-by city sports complex or to the city park, especially just right before sunset. I could see the vibrant colors while trying to pace my breathing, just before the mosquitoes come out. Before the city sports complex was closed because of the pandemic, my brothers and their friends would invite me to join them at Frisbee sometimes.
Frisbee was never my thing because I am way too impatient at pitching perfectly acceptable throws, and I’m basically a kindergartener when it comes to catching one. I would often be paralyzed when catching a Frisbee because I really dread the idea of being hit on the face or any of my sensitive fingers while catching it. My height also doesn’t do me any justice when I’m playing with my brothers. Why? Because admittedly, they are vertically gifted, magnificent creatures, whose height genes I sadly did not inherit.
That’s why I am making this a part of my post-pandemic bucket list to challenge myself the art of Frisbee so I can:
- Have another thing with my brothers to bond with
- Have additional sweat sessions that doesn’t bore me out
- Look cool and boost my ego 😎 lol.
Several months of mandatory physical distancing placed our mental healths in deep strain. No wonder. Human beings are social creatures and are not made to be isolated for longer periods of time. A lot of distress has been brought to us by the pandemic especially those who live alone and far away from their homes [7,8]. I could personally empathize. Being stuck in Lapu-lapu city without a job and far away from my family was a time I had been the loneliest in my life.
Whenever my friends from the studio offered to send their support by dropping off food at my place, I would restrain myself from hugging them, because the last thing I would want was an additional risk of viral infection. They have the same concern of course, and as understandable as it was, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of sadness at the situation. I never expected that a day would come when I would start missing simple gestures of physical affection like a smile, or hugging, or hand holding, or a pat on the shoulder. I realized how much I took for granted before, and how much I actually like physical affection more than I would like to admit.
So when all of this is over, I highly recommend you start hugging your touchy or hugger friends or reciprocate simple gestures of physical affection. They must be itching to receive physical affection after a long time and I will do the same. Let’s not ever take things like those for granted after all this.
Like most people, I started café and tea shop hopping during college out of convenience and necessity. These are places where my friends and I would spend time studying and planning projects and if we’re lucky, we’d get the whole place for ourselves. After college, it finally had a function that was non-academic related: they became my favorite hang-out place with my friends, a place where I would catch up with my old colleagues and do our usual pick-up-where-we-last-drop-off talks.
Sadly, the pandemic rendered a lot of meet-up places like cafés and tea shops helpless. They were eyed for a huge source of transmission, along with other small businesses and recreational industries like museums, tourist attractions, fitness centers and gyms. Majority of these centers in critical areas were forced to close for many months. Some of these businesses have already been crippled to the point of permanent shut down [9–11].
After this pandemic, there is nothing I would rather want more than to bring back our economy’s former glory. I think we’ve already have had enough of this. So aside from placing these in my post-pandemic bucket list, I recommend you add these to your list too: schedule café dates with your friends, buy from your local struggling sectors, go to the gym, and if you can, leave a tip. You don’t have to agree with me but I for one think it’s the least I can do especially for people whose families heavily rely on these kinds of businesses as their main source of income.
This year has also been a hard year on my family. My dad is an OFW in Japan, and right before any hard lockdown, my mother went to visit him in attempt to renew her visa, thinking that it was about to expire. She later found out that the expiry date was not until next year (oops), but she already booked a plane ticket and went to Japan anyway.
I honestly thought it was a good move, because if my mother didn’t go to Japan, my dad would have spent the rest of the year in Japan, alone. Might as well have both of them stranded together and unable to go home than one of them going through all that hell. I did that for a month and it already took a huge toll on me. Let me tell you folks, being away from your family isn’t easy.
My dad comes home every half a year, and spends a two-week vacation with us, mostly on road trips. We’d tour around the whole island, its beaches, its mountains, taking any opportunity to get a wacky photo without a care in what people around us thought.
Gooood times. We never got to do all that so far this year, though. If there is anything I would want in the previous normal back, it’s road trips with my family.
He was supposed to come home last April. Now it’s already three-fourths of 2020, and he still isn’t home.
Who is the protean creator’s boyfriend you ask? His name is Kevin Carl, a city boy in Cebu for most of his life. He’s a lot more charming than he looks, and like me, he wanted to experience the world outside his island. This was the reason why he chose to take the job opportunity to be relocated to Mindanao last November.
Being the good girl friend that I am, I can’t possibly keep him from pursuing his career or make him choose between his career advancement and the relationship— that would be pretty unfair. We are still in our twenties; the world is ours for the taking as Marie Heins would put it, so why should I impose a barrier over him and his growth? I honestly wouldn’t want that as well if the roles were switched.
At that time, I was pretty optimistic that it was just a temporary business trip. Now months have passed and the word ‘temporary’ has obviously gone stale. Nevertheless, I learned a lot during this pandemic about relationships, and this year was the year I finally broke my own record for longest “away session” in a long-distance relationship.
But LDR is already frustrating enough as it is, and I’m pretty sure all of you who subscribed to the same thing can relate: the misalignment of communication schedules, the constant need to update topics to talk about, mood swings, technical difficulties, boredom and other related frustrations.
Overall, long-distance relationship or any type of romantic relationship isn’t easy, and it becomes a whole lot more difficult when throwing in the limitations of long-distance, and much more difficult during this pandemic. Basically, every relationship has become long-distance due to this crisis 🙄. That’s why I think that after all of this, it would be nice to spend a lot more quality time with my romantic partner, and you should too.
As I’ve said before, my position as an educator is one thing that would not change even after this pandemic. I will soon have to learn how to properly navigate my role in school.
However, one thing that will is that I will finally have to start teaching students face-to-face in a classroom setting instead of the modular learning system. It’s a whole kind of new for me, and I honestly feel mortified and excited at the same time.
Bring it on, life!
#hiveph
[1] P. Neo, Stop COVID-19 hoarding: Indonesian police and Philippines government order purchase limits, Food Navig. (2020). https://www.foodnavigator-asia.com/Article/2020/03/27/Stop-COVID-19-hoarding-Indonesian-police-and-Philippines-government-order-purchase-limits.
[2] D.J. Esguerra, 594 arrested for hoarding, profiteering amid COVID-19 crisis, Inquirer.Net. (2020). https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1255032/594-arrested-for-hoarding-profiteering-amid-covid-19-crisis.
[3] M. Manlangit, The Hurting Heroes: The COVID-19 Crisis and Overseas Filipino Workers, Dipl. (2020).
[4] R. Murugappan, How COVID-19 Isolation Affects Our Mental Health, Star. (2020). https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/health/2020/04/08/how-isolation-for-covid-19-affects-our-mental-health (accessed September 13, 2020).
[5] M. Ketchell, #COVID19: Social Media both a blessing and a curse during coronavirus pandemic, Conversat. (2020). https://theconversation.com/covid19-social-media-both-a-blessing-and-a-curse-during-coronavirus-pandemic-133596 (accessed September 13, 2020).
[6] A.M. Lima, Diego Laurentino; de Medeiros Lopes, Maria Anonieta Albanez; Brito, Social Media: Friend or Foe in the COVID-19 Pandemic, SciELO. (2020). doi:10.6061/clinics/2020/e1953.
[7] E.G. Ellis, What Coronavirus Isolation Could Do to Your Mind (and Body), Wired. (2020). https://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-covid-19-isolation-psychology/.
[8] J. Framingham, How Our Social Network Help Us Thrive, Psych Cent. (2020). https://psychcentral.com/lib/how-our-social-network-helps-us-thrive/.
[9] Department of Interior and Local Government, DILG to LGUs, PNP: Close non-essential business operations, (2020). https://dilg.gov.ph/news/DILG-to-LGUs-PNP-Close-non-essential-business-operations/NC-2020-1095.
[10] H. Long, Small business used to define America’s economy. The pandemic could change that forever., Washington Post. (2020). https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/12/small-business-used-define-americas-economy-pandemic-could-end-that-forever/ (accessed September 13, 2020).
[11] C. Bartik, Alexander; Bertrand, Marianne; Cullen, Zoe; Glaeser, Edward; Luca, Michael; Stanton, The impact of COVID-19 on small business outcomes and expectations, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 117 (2020). doi:10.1073/pnas.200699111.
Special thanks to photos by:
Courtney Moore on Unsplash
James L.W on Unsplash