5/12/20 Jeffrey Zeng PD 7

Jeffrey Zeng

5/12/2020

Period 7

Modern Mythology 2020

What's it like working from home?

This is less about how I work at home, but what I experienced while being home, and how it affected me and my work.  Working from home has been a much more difficult transition for me than it was for other people. In my life I’ve always lacked a goal, something that I wanted to obtain. School work wasn’t difficult, but it was because I had my friends to help. I always looked forward to tomorrow, not because of the work, but because of my friends and the things we’d do together. It’s our last year at this school, so of course my friends were thinking of the future. Some had meticulous plans that stretched all the way to college graduation, others had more of a vague idea of what to do. They were like potters, easily shaping these rough plans and ideas and working each one until they were content with its form, while I haven’t even put a thing on my potter's wheel. I had hobbies, but nothing came to mind when asked about my future. I was excited when I first heard that schools were being closed, who wouldn't be? I thought that this would be a great time to expand on my hobbies and work out a plan for the future. The first few weeks were fine, I kept up with most of my work and enjoyed my time at home. Every day, I woke up with less excitement though. After a couple weeks, I was frantically trying to figure out what I felt happy doing. It was always the most fun when I was with friends, so this was the first time I thought about what I wanted to do. I couldn’t stay with my friends forever, they all had places they wanted to be, and I couldn’t keep up. I frantically tried to put together a plan for myself, and yet, was not motivated to even take the first step forward. My head was filled with crumpled up ideas, and nothing to show for all that effort. I was no closer to a future I wanted to see myself in than when the quarantine started. Of course I wasn’t alone at home, my parents were constantly pestering me about my future. They were just worried, but it felt intoxicating. At some point I had just given up, I locked myself in my room and gave up on the hobbies that gave me little to no gratification. My grades took a hit, but I didn’t care, the days blended with the nights and I just ran on auto pilot. I finally snapped out of my haze when my cousin decided to talk to me. He asked me why I was so worried about my future to begin with and I couldn’t give him an answer. Honestly, if he hadn’t talked to me that day, I don’t know if I would have gotten out of that hole. I still don't have any kind of plan, but I’ll just enjoy the time I can spend with all my friends before I can’t catch up with them anymore.

What are you learning about your community based on the reactions?

Within my neighborhood, there isn’t much that changed, but I feel that this has gotten some of my neighbors to open up while others to stay more at home. I went for a walk around the neighborhood today and noticed just how close the asian community has gotten during this time, including my own family. We often exchange food and other supplies with one another, and some people across the street struck up a conversation with me. Other than that, very few people go past their front yard, even in this tight knit community. I’ve seen my next door neighbor less and less, but I think it’s just due to our schedules because I’ve talked to the man a couple times and he’s quite nice. There are people who aren’t as nice though, on my walk today I saw some people who were also actively avoiding everyone, I don’t know if it was because of my ethnicity, but it’s understandable that people are just trying to keep themselves safe.