it's been nearly a year since the virus started taking over our daily lives. how have you changed?

[nutterwithasolderingiron]

positives: 

i took up cycling and feel healthier as a result.
i became closer friend's with some people.
i started my band. 
i wasn't hit super hard financially by the pandemic.

 

negatives: 

i've only seen my dad once since the pandemic took over. 
i've not seen the rest of my family since the pandemic.

a few of my friend's and members of their family died. 

i've kinda reverted back to media from my teens and early 20's as comfort. 

i feel like i'm pretty isolated from the world around me. 
there's a whole bunch of my friend's who lost their jobs through the pandemic

a lot of my support groups got shut down and it's not the same over zoom. 

i've been absolutely livid at how many politicians have been handling this. 

there's some friends of mine who i've not seen in over a year. 

i've had trouble getting into a routine when every week, the rules change. 

 

so what about all of you, how has your life changed? 

[teetojen]

Positives

• I discovered new music and artists
• I got to see my pets everyday (have been living on campus in a dorm since fall 2018)
• I started making candles and realize I really enjoy making them

Negatives

• My mental health has definitely gotten worse
• School sucks (especially as a music major)
• I saw how many people only care about themselves and their lack of respect for others let the virus get this bad

[Ceebs]

The pandemic itself really hasn't changed too much about my life, tbh. But over the course of that time period, things have still changed.

 

I'm still struggling with my mental health (as I have for literal decades), but it's somewhat better than it was a year ago.

 

I don't drink to drown my misery anymore, just mostly for enjoyment's sake.

 

My previous unhealthy relationship came to an end and I'm a happy, loving, fulfilling one with my best friend.

 

I've learnt that I have a lifetime of undiagnosed/untreated ADHD at the root of many of my struggles and I'm hopeful that'll help me make some genuine progress.
 

I've started doing a bit more baking/cooking of things I used to enjoy making but haven't in a long time.

 

Probably other stuff I'm forgetting...

[jelli]

Positives:

• Started to exercise daily
• Gotten closer to my friends
• Been able to stay home all the time (don't like going outside)
• Spend more time by myself (I really like being by myself, very relaxing and peaceful)

Negatives:

• My mental health has definitely gotten a lot worse (way more anxious than before quarantine)
• Been procrastinating a lot more since I have more time now
• Sleeping schedule has gotten worse, still not as bad as other people's sleeping schedules (other people as in my friends) but compared to before the pandemic, definitely worse. 

 

[Homer]

Not at all. Well, let's say that I grew a lot (and no, I don't mean "as a person")

[Ceebs]

2 minutes ago, Homer said:

Not at all. Well, let's say that I grew a lot (and no, I don't mean "as a person")

I'm sorry in advance, but this is what I thought of. 😂

 

[Homer]

Why thank you

[Gloomy]

Positive: Working from home three days per week which means being able to hang out with my cats and my husbando during my breaks, saving money on gas, sleeping in, and wearing pajamas or loungewear.

 

Negatives:

-The downsides to working from home: My electric bill is higher. Some parts of my job are harder to do. For some reason I think communicating with coworkers is less anxiety-inducing in person. I don’t have a proper office chair, just a wooden dining room chair with some pillows.

-I haven’t seen my family as often obviously.

-My bad mental health including an ED has been exacerbated by this shit. Of course it didn’t help that my dumbass also stopped taking my meds for a while.

[cato]

Positives

• Re-learned to how to drive after 10 years and bought a car
• Got back into running more regularly
• Reconnected with two friends I had fallen out of touch with
• Spent oodles of time with the cat
• This past Christmas was the first time my normally emotionally distant family was glad to see each other, because omg hUmAn CoNtAcT!!
• Moved out to suburban New Jersey and decided I don't want to live in suburban New Jersey after all.  Got that one crossed off my list, I guess!

Negatives

• Have been fighting with suicidal depression all year
• Extremely lonely
• Lost my passion for my job.  WFH makes my job very lonely and dull
• Feel like Jabba the Hutt pretty much every day

[Lord Jade Cross]

43 minutes ago, CBC said:

I'm sorry in advance, but this is what I thought of. 😂

 

 

  Hide contents

 

I'd stay away from those. They tend to have a bad reputation.

 

As for me, nothing's really change since the pandemic started

[Euna]

Positives:

• Still have a job
• Made new friends
• Learned a lot about myself and the world

Negatives:

• Went through a bad LDR that came about from pandemic loneliness
• Depression/anxiety from current events
• Feel a bit stuck in a rut

 

[thecoffeecricket]

Positives:

• I'm doing more crafty stuff which is bringing me joy
• I still have my job and I'm incredibly grateful for that
• I found a place nearby where I can go for walks when the weather cooperates

Negatives:

• Sort of dealing with a PTSD thing right now which is affecting...everything. Silence has been my enemy lately.
• Lost a few people unexpectedly -- not COVID-related but because of COVID, the entire mourning period was spent alone which I wouldn't wish on anyone
• Pandemic paranoia is setting in where I think everyone hates me and that I'm doing everything wrong

[cato]

3 minutes ago, thecoffeecricket said:

Pandemic paranoia is setting in where I think everyone hates me and that I'm doing everything wrong

Oof.  I feel this.  Depression is never my friend in this regard, but conducting everything over video calls and Slack lets the doubt creep in something fierce...

[thecoffeecricket]

2 minutes ago, cato said:

Oof.  I feel this.  Depression is never my friend in this regard, but conducting everything over video calls and Slack lets the doubt creep in something fierce...

Yes, exactly. My coworker and I talk about this all the time, how we can't sense tone through an email. So when someone emails to say, "Hey, can you do this for me?" it feels like they're saying, "Why haven't you done this already?" And my rational brain knows that isn't the case but Jesus, it's been an entire year of this.

[riskygamble]

Positives

• Fortunate to have a job that can be done remotely, minus the organizing tasks that I only have to come in once a week for
• More time to indulge in games and hobbies, making a dent in backlog
• Spending more time outside and getting back into cycling and walking
• More time at home with my partner

Negatives

• Exacerbated mental health concerns - tons of anxiety especially social, harder to combat avoidant tendencies because of quarantine
• Low energy/difficulty getting anything done without tons of effort, might be AD(H)D thing but pandemic probably didn't help either
• General loneliness and boredom not being able to partake in the few relatively social activities I had prior 
• Fucking fuck anxiety-inducing Zoom/video calls - I'll take seeing anyone face to face as much as I hate it over video call shit, I think fortunately my boss feels similar but the few times everyone had to meet through them I could feel my blood pressure going through the roof

 

[Iam9man]

Moved from PPS to Off-A.
 

Iam9man

PPS Moderator

[Libellule]

Positives

• I found a job in the field I wanted to get into and moved across the country
• I got closer again with some friends I'd had less contact with before
• I still met some great people
• I quit smoking 

Negatives

• My mental health pretty much fell to an all time low 
• I haven't seen some of my friends in ages and don't know when I will see them again
• General frustration with how terribly our government is handling this situation
• Probably developed some slightly workaholic tendencies as a means of distracting myself from it all and got quite close to exhaustion a few times

[Real Estate RICO]

Ps:

I've spent a good bit of time in Codecademy

I'm finally at the point where I'm done with my ex after reconnecting with her last February

DRY 2020

 

Ns:

However, I haven't spent as much time with Codecademy as I should, plus the Pro account mocks me because it's either $300 upfront or $40/month, which I can't do right now

I'm at the heaviest weight I've ever been

I'm a lot more irritable/bitter/angry to where I'm slowly turning back into misanthropy, which is a place I do not want to be in

I've pretty much lived in a bubble to where I only talk to 1 person outside of my family regularly, if I even do so at all

I had extreme difficulty starting up conversations with new people even before the pandemic (particularly after a rather bad OLD experience); I've pretty much gotten to the point where I don't even bother with meeting new people anymore.

[Steel13]

Positives:

I am conducting research on mental health during the pandemic, and it has been really fascinating and helpful to my career

I have become closer to my roommate, since we're stuck inside together

I spent some quality time with my parents

I have a lot more free time than I used to

 

Negatives:

My physical health is not great, which is depressing, since I used to be very fit and healthy. Putting on the pounds is real rough!

I miss hugs so much

The endless zoom calls and masks have made my auditory disorder so much harder to live with

I'm really lonely and everyone else is too depressed/anti-social now to want to interact anymore

I have repeatedly lost jobs and opportunities and my dreams of working abroad are dead

It is so hard to make enough money to eat and afford college at the same time when I keep getting let go due to COVID

[Ashmedai]

I managed to get a new job, which has been taking a fair bit of my time for most of it. Other than that, not much has changed.

[Obsessed_With_Dragons]

Positives:

• I've gotten better at keeping calm in verbal fights, and not taking what other people say to heart.
• I've decreased my mental reliance on other people.
• I've stopped viewing my own happiness as the "central life goal," instead deciding to focus on others first.

Negatives:

• My habit of being online instead of doing schoolwork has dramatically increased (as me being here shows, lol).
• I've started to think way too much about my marginal "problems."
• I'm still too lazy to actually do anything.

I just realized nothing on this list was actually directly a result of the coronavirus. 🙃

[Grumpy Alien]

🤷‍♀️

[Guest]

Positives

-Planning for the future a lot more. This has given me so much more time for introspective. I haven't had such a life moment, since my early 20's, desperate to find myself.

-Am investing more money. Best time to do so, is now.

-Am spending more time with loved ones. If anything, times like these make you appreciate those in your life, tenfold.

-Really have re-thought my career aspirations, and like the above--have gone all guns out about starting my business which was more of a 5 year goal which has become a now, and do or die goal. Property and land in many places are at an incredible low.

 

Negatives

-I can't travel. I'm an addict, so that has been rough. Have had to be creative.

-The frustration of being booked for a surgery, and likely having to wait half a year or longer to get in.

-How hard it was to get seen in the first place, with extreme pain and just not having a doctor wanting to see me. You almost feel like not bothering, unless you're about to die, as you'll have to jump through hoops. I know people with cancer, who are being pushed back, which is crazy especially if you're in a life or death predicament. So I feel lucky, in that sense.

-Sick of hearing about it on the news. Variants, and just hopelessness being driven down our throats. Suicide and overdose rates shoot up? Oh, crap, maybe we need to allow people out for mental health. Just having to watch the incompetence of my government. Glad I stopped, as it wasn't healthy.

-Its made me avoid huge crowds, when I used to love crowd watching.

Too big a crowd makes me uncomfortable.

[dreamy]

I used to be responsible and proud and healthy and excited.

[Guest]

I didn’t like the mafia, er, government to begin with, but now I’d like to go all Boston Tea Party on their sorry asses.

[bare_trees]

The big one for me is spending less money on food.  Since it's not safe to eat out, I'm more likely to prepare something to eat and bring it to work, since I'll be eating in my car anyway.  (There's really nowhere to eat at my job that doesn't involve being around people).

[MetricalSky]

I really haven’t changed much at all, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

[Sea Lemon]

Positives:

- Gained a deeper bond and more certainty of my compatibility with my partner now we've spent the whole pandemic living together 

 

- Got more time to enjoy the company of the rats

 

- Everything shutting down has given me the time and space to start getting to the bottom of my mental health issues 

 

 

Negatives:

- Social isolation - I really struggle with online socialising, so I feel like I've drifted away from a lot of my friends because I can't maintain relationships like this. 

 

- The boredom that comes with lockdown has really sapped my physical and mental energy. 

[Sean_Bird]

Covid helped me realize some hard truths about family members. (ended up long, hence putting it in a spoiler thing. I don't think it warrants any tw)

 

Spoiler

 

Before Covid, I used to see my older sister as a good person, and used her as a model for a lot of my strong, female characters in my writing. I knew she wasn't perfect, and I was never very close to her (we have almost a 20 year difference in age), but I respected her as a person. She makes food for homeless people, she helps addicts when they need it (whether it's a warm meal, or a jacket, or just about anything to help them live a better life), she and her husband (now ex) bought a large piece of property and set it up so that our mother and grandparents lived on the property with them. For the most part, I saw her as a kind of ideal to live up to. A role model. She had a hard life growing up, but grew into a person that used her resources to help others.

 

However, she has a tendency to make friends with people that abuse their kids. For most of my life (primarily as an adult) I've been scared to be near her; whenever I visited, I've had panic attacks, severe anxiety around her, and resort to excessive drinking to get through most family events with her involved. I figured it was because of her friends, not her; that she was just befriending these toxic people in order to help their kids. Growing up I had memories of her helping those kids, from making sure they had clothes, they were getting a decent education, had a warm meal. So in my mind, I rationalized that she was befriending these abusive people to help the people they were hurting.

 

But... I was wrong. Last year, just before the first lockdown was going to be eased up, she decided that she "needed to escape" her three story dream home in one of the wealthiest places in the state. She lives right next to a hiking trail, she has plenty of friends in the area that she could have gone to for a change in scenery, and the state was just about to open up. She decided that she needed to go on a road trip with her friends halfway across the country to Texas, right as they were hitting a wave of Covid outbreaks. She decided that she needed to fly out our 67 year old, cancer surviving, mother and her child on a plane to Texas, where they would do meals with family members/family friends without masks or anything (she posted pics-- which, proved that my mom was lying when she texted about all the precautions they were taking). My sister was making plans the day after she returned to Oregon to socialize with her friends.

 

She easily could have started an outbreak. She could have gotten hundreds of people killed. My grandparents and mother live on the property with her (different buildings, same property), along with an older guy with severe health problems. If there had been a Covid outbreak on that property, that's four people that likely would have dropped dead from it.

 

I had to beg my mom over the phone to not go. My mom was going because she didn't want my sister driving to Oregon alone, so she was going to protect her child. I offered to pay for a plane ticket for my sister, so that she'd put fewer people at risk. (by the time I contacted her, she was already in Texas, so I couldn't do anything else) Having my sister fly back would have meant that our mother didn't have to go on a plane or road trip.

 

My sister isn't a terrible person, but she's not a good one, either. At a mild inconvenience, she's willing to let countless people die, and that's not okay. She didn't befriend those child abusers because she wanted to help those kids, she did it because she's like them, and wanted to party. They were kindred spirits.

 

I always thought that my severe anxiety and panic attacks were my fault-- she's my sister, she can't be that bad, it's just my anxiety-- but it wasn't. Subconsciously I knew, she's a monster that at the slightest inconvenience, will throw me under the bus. I legitimately feel bad for her youngest son, who is going to be dealing with a lot of trauma and hardships, some of which I faced myself as a result of her.

 

She easily could have, knowingly, gotten hundreds of people killed-- all over a fucking pedicure.

 

 

Positives:

- I learned more about myself, and have solidified my morals and beliefs.

- I learned a plethora of borderline useless crafts.

- I learned how to make quality watercolor paintings in a short period of time.

- I learned more about social media algorithms.

- My relationship to my cat has improved.

- I've become more active on Aven and feel a sense of community I haven't felt in a long time.

 

Negatives:

- I learned how shitty people are.

- I learned how shitty some of my family members are.

- I've been suicidal for the first time in 8 years.

- Covid fucked all of my plans to jumpstart my art career (no idea if it would have worked, but it at least would have gotten me more active)

- I've spent 99% of my time trapped in a tiny room and am losing my fucking mind

- I have a plethora of art pieces that I can't sell, because I suck at selling online and can't sell at markets for months, at least.

[aafire]

very good year for me honestly.

 

- started a new job a few months before covid began, my old job would get wiped out shortly after due to covid

- making enough money now to get my own apartment, moved in mid-quarantine which was tough

- financially stable for first time in who knows how long, actually able to pay off debt w/ stimulus and start saving

- christmas bonus (??) and raise (???) this year, never had those before

- started baking / cooking more of my own food, def healthier

- mental health is still iffy

- WOW I spent a lot of time and $ at bars in 2019. (living across the road from one didn't help lol)

- I really miss my friends

- oh and I found AVEN