My Guilty Love for Quarantine

March 16, 2021

At the time of writing this, a year has already passed since quarantine began. I remember that the news of school moving to online learning broke out in the middle of my AP Computer Science class - the whole class cheered. It was speculated that we would return after a few short weeks…

With all the extra time on my hands - just like many of you guys - I binge watched a lot of anime and played lots of games; it felt like summer break! … and just like summer break, I quickly experienced the guilt of indulging in these games shortly after. I began remodeling my website and quickly found web development fascinating - I unlocked a whole new territory to explore and learn.

What resulted from this past year of quarantine were countless projects that I am so proud to have made. My self-esteem improved tremendously - I felt worthy for the first time in a while.

Quarantine is great.

I sound horrible for saying that, disregarding the thousands of lives that were lost to this virus. However, quarantine was a blessing for me, providing me with the opportunity to finally pause for a moment and collect myself in this never-ending rat race life of mines.

Quarantine has been especially hard on my classmates, having to constantly deal with cancelled events and the fact that hanging out is not an option. It’s kind of sad now that I think of it, but the main reason I never really got upset from quarantine is because I don’t really have a social life; I never felt disappointed because I didn’t have much to lose in the first place.

I remember seeing an article somewhere that Iceland, being one of the “happiest” countries in the world, is also one of the countries with the highest suicide rates. The rationale is that when you are surrounded by happy people all around you, it makes you feel out of place when you inevitably experience sadness. I feel the same way towards quarantine - it became normal to be lonely, to feel stressed, to feel sad.

I guess that’s why I like rainy days.


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Written by Ajay Liu who builds websites and games to make the world a little happier. Check out his website!