Rekindling Passions in a Time of Pandemic

It is the 101st day of quarantine in our country. A lot has happened, and I barely remember a thing.

Shifting from traditional to online classes has not been easy, given the current pandemic situation and the slow internet speed in the country. Major adjustments happened from everything personal to virtual, with even the jobs of other Filipinos being affected.

Enduring the pain of being locked inside our homes due to the pandemic has been depressing and even devastating. As I write this, I cannot help but feel utter sadness because the past two months have not been easy for everyone.

Every time I wake up, I must drag myself from the bed and remember that this is the reality – this will be the life I will be living in the coming days. Every single day that has passed is nothing but melancholic. I am not complaining that I do not want to study; I am feeling this way because I am battling with my own emotions and it is not an easy feat. I am just a college student who lives in a small neighborhood in a province in South Luzon.

There are unwanted external factors that really affected my concentration while having my online classes at home. Our house is also just enough for us to sleep and move around, leaving me without enough space to concentrate and study.

Though I was lacking the resources to gather my focus, my parents still tried to help me with my studies. They have seen how I struggled to wake and pick myself up, yet they did not force me to do anything academic so I could find the right time to contain my focus again.

Many people discovered different things while in quarantine. As for me, being the persistent person that I am, I tried to find ways to escape this confinement that gave me so much sadness. For the past two months, my neurons were busy working on what I should do to entertain myself while in quarantine.

Then came the day that I tried to rekindle my burned-out childhood passions and relive it again. Writing is one of these passions. It was hard to start writing again, since my mind is always preoccupied with my academic worries. This has happened a lot lately because of my not-so-normal sleeping schedule – I tend to fall asleep around 2 to 3 o’clock in the morning, because my mind is active at midnight.

It was one late night when something pushed me to get up the bed and open my laptop. Like something saying that I need to get up, so I could finally face my worries. So, I reached the peak and started writing again. It was a liberating feeling.

Being able to write again during this season gave me hope that there is something more to do than worry about the coming days.

Although there are still times that I cannot help but overthink, I help myself by shifting to writing and expressing my thoughts through it. Having a tireless and anxious mind is not easy to carry around, but it also has its benefits, which helps me get through my days during the pandemic season.

I never thought that being confined inside our home would give me a nostalgic feeling. Memories of my childhood slowly came to me. Aside from writing again, I bumped into one of our childhood games – Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy. I used to play it with my eldest brother back in 2008. It showed me a glimpse of my 8-year-old self that used to watch her brother play it. Now that I am old enough to understand the game, I played it on my own and realized that it was a good stress reliever before the coming exams.

Life is not always what we expect it to be. We never knew that the lockdown would take so long. Though the pandemic taking its toll on everyone, we should all be reminded that we can overcome the challenges it is giving us.

This is a part of our journey as humans and will eventually become a story to tell in the future. This pandemic taught me that you could be happy and thankful with even the smallest of things. Having the opportunity to wake up in the morning is an example. Being able to pick yourself up after an anxious day is a good feeling. I was blessed enough to survive the struggles of online classes.

If it were not for my persistence and determination to pick myself up despite feeling mentally weak during this time, I could have not written this one. Sometimes, it takes a little push to finally finish what you have started.

• Aberose Bio is a student under the Medical Technology program of University of Santo Tomas. She wrote this piece last year.

• She is also a Patriot Scholar under the Department of Science and Technology in the Philippines. She has a Youtube channel where she talks about how it's like to be a MedTech student in her university. She also loves to use StudyStream whenever she studies and hopes to meet more new study buddies in the platform.