“Netflix became my best friend, and I spent all day staring at some screen. After weeks and weeks of wallowing in self-pity and boredom, I decided to be productive. So after, a few days of minimal planning, I decided to start a blog!”
“School was weird because my school offered distance learning as an optional assignment and their was no interaction with other teachers or students. The only incentive was a letter grade boost if we did 90% of assignments so I did distance learning for some of my harder AP classes I had B’s in. This went on for the first few months like March, April, May.”
“Personally, I was deeply affected during the pandemic because my grandmother (who lives in America) came down with the virus. This was a big scare to me and my family and I got really worried. The thing was that we could not even travel to her to help her and even if we could, we would have a massive chance of getting the virus ourselves.”
“At home I feel best at the moment. I would not like to be stuck in another country and not see my family. I pass my time on the computer or I help my father in his garage. We can only go shopping with a mask and the shops are very full.”
“In March and April, during the lockdown, I virtually did not leave my house at all, maybe with an exception for a short bike ride every two days, but since May, as the restrictions are being eased (May 18 – reopening of restaurants), I am going out more often (though always wearing a mask).”
“Quarantine is not anymore an entertaining new activity, but a lifestyle. As for me, I can’t complain, I’ve been coping with it pretty well. Reading adventure books has helped me as a way of evading reality and feeling as if I had gone for a walk at least, and having the school routine as usual tricks my mind into thinking I actually went outside of my home.”
“Only a month ago, you were longing for peace and quiet and a peaceful interruption in the exhausting daily routine, now you only wish for some kind of occupation, even a distraction from all the idleness and the abysmal emptiness of boredom. These spiritual paradoxes, which were formed within a month, prove the basic imperfection of man and our ever-changing desires and desires.”
“The streets of my neighborhood are completely deserted, but every evening someone plays music from their balcony and everybody sings to it! I love how we Italians always manage to be loud!!”
“I live in a quiet place, in the middle of the countryside, so I could at least go for a walk… I live in a pretty big house, but it was hard to stay at home with my mom, my dad and my two brothers… at first it seemed like a little vacation, it’s true… my brother who hates going to school was happy too, but then we realized we couldn’t even go to soccer and dance, so many things started to be missing. “
“Maybe the virus wants to bring us back to reality, to the real meaning of things and wants to teach us all the values that we have gradually obscured, the relationships that we have reset in favour of digital distance. Every day I ask myself: “How good was everything before?!”. Let’s hope everything goes smoothly and gets back to the way it was before!”
Life in Quarantine: Witnessing Global Pandemic is an initiative sponsored by the Poetic Media Lab and the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis at Stanford University.
Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA),
Stanford University
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