#writtenaboutaweekago

[stefinatelychen]

I didn't have much of a chance to stock up on food like most others were doing before the effects of Covid-19 started hitting the United States and things started shutting down/changing over here because I was working so much. The rest of my family is in Southern California, and they had stocked up beforehand because they work normal daytime hours and they have each other to depend on.

Beyond that, my brother-in-law has always been a bit neurotic and has always prepared for worst case scenarios -- so he was one of the people hoarding tons of water, toilet paper, and canned food at Costco prior to the mandates for social distancing. I thought that he was being paranoid (because he has a history of being paranoid) and because I was so damn busy working, I didn't really dig into what was going on with COVID-19. I had read SOME articles that were part of a series called "The Coronavirus Diaries" on Slate yet still it all seemed distant.

It wasn't until my sister urged me to stock up on food that I did -- and I did a pretty minimal amount of stocking up for three main reasons: I still wasn't taking it too seriously (I thought that if anything, my reason for not being able to access food would be because people were panic-buying, and that that would settle down over time), I was too broke to stock up on much (I work in the service industry - most of us live paycheck to paycheck), and a lot of the hoarders had taken out a lot of the food that I normally buy.

About a month and a half (maybe two) prior to the point where people started panic-buying at the grocery stores in my city, I had started experimenting with eating vegetarian -- sort of on a whim, after watching Okja (which was also a random spontaneous decision). There are several reasons to go veggie/vegan: ethical reasons (loving animals, loving the planet), health and nutritional reasons, reasons related to grossness/cleanliness/neuroticism, etc. I see validity in all of those but in all honesty, much of what I do in life is random more than anything. I like absurdity, I like challenging myself to do something that the 5-year-younger version of me would never have thought I would do (moving to Austin, TX from Los Angeles was another one of those spontaneous, absurd choices - a high school/college me saw me nowhere else but on the coasts or somewhere foreign, working towards a career in the arts rather than working full time in the service industry in the middle of the country). So I thought, "vegetarianism - why not now? Okay, now it is." It would astound my mom if she knew -- 8 year old me was always picking all the meat out of the dishes she served, and she had raised us to be carnivores.

Anyhow, it was actually good timing to go vegetarian. By the time I was used to eating vegetarian and no longer craved meat (in fact, I find veggie meats to be more delicious and interesting tasting now... but that's probably because I taste fatigue on all things easily -- from jobs to music to food to drinks to even a good amount of people -- so this may be yet another phase), the panic-buyers were clearing out all the meats in the grocery stores. The only things left were vegetarian and vegan meats. So no problem there at first - I stocked up on all sorts of veggie meats from both the fresh and frozen sections (Beyond Burgers, Dr. Praeger's, Gardein, Morningstar, BOCA...).

Veggies were hard to find - even in the frozen section. I wound up settling for a very ordinary bag of GOYA's frozen carrot-corn-pea medley. I also bought ice cream for the first time in months (probably because the shopping experience at HEB was so stressful -- there were still a lot of people in there and some people weren't trying to stay 6 feet away from anybody at all, and there was a weird energy to the entire store... plus grocery shopping has always been a stressful thing in the past for me because (1) people are generally so spatially unaware, and it annoys me and (2) I am the worst decision-maker ever because I am overly analytical to the point where decisions wear me out, AND I am prone to marketing (packaging, "sale" markers, strategic price points, etc.) so I have to do a lot of filter-ing/second guessing and will myself to listen to the things I remember from psychology books about marketing/decision-making). The groceries I picked up weren't TOO different from what my normal run has been like for the past few months, with the exception of toilet paper and pasta (because there was none left of either).

I deliberately chose not to get snacks because I knew that I'd be home all the time, and I'd feel compelled to boredom eat, and if it was there I would most definitely consume it. I settled for ice cream and cereal as dessert items for when I was really craving some sugary-stress treats for when PMS would hit.

Everyone was buying milk - but luckily for me, I switched to oat milk a year or so ago and have loved it more than any other milk (almond, dairy, coconut, walnut, soy).

Before COVID-19, I was often the only roommate at home during the daytime. I'm pretty introverted at home. I'm outgoing a lot of times outside of my home and work, so a lot of people don't assume this. But home is my sanctuary - it is my place to recharge. I deliberately chose to work night hours at a bar when I first started living here because I loved having the apartment to myself as often as possible. I absolutely love cooking and find it meditative -- but only when there is nobody else around. I'm not a fan of talking to people while I'm focused on the food, or of even being around anyone. For whatever reason, it turns the experience of cooking from a meditative/relaxing act to a stressful one for me. So I used to cook a lot more before the mandates to stay home, and I was really taking my time in the kitchen (and enjoying having the entire space of our tiny kitchen to myself) - taking pleasure in mincing garlic, chopping vegetables, boiling water, cooking pasta... letting the smells fill the room... sometimes listening to a podcast while I cooked, or just listening to the soothing sounds of boiling water, crackling oil, sizzling sauteed vegetables, the knife on the chopping board... it was so simply therapeutic.

Then my roommate started working at home a little over a week ago. I just can't spend time in the kitchen anymore. He brought home his 3-monitor computer setup from work, and it doesn't fit in his room (he mentioned that he had to clean out his room first before putting his computer setup in there, but now I think he's just resolved to stay in the common area) so he's now permanently camped out on our dining table in the common area. We have an open set-up where the living room, dining room, and kitchen are all one big shared area, so there is no real privacy once you leave your room. He has become a permanent fixture of that space, and now when I leave my room, he is never not there.

Most of the time, I do not feel like interacting because I am (1) cranky from not going out much and having my balance of seeing the world, seeing other individuals, and (2) he is (endearing but...) a chronic talker. He is one of those people who feels compelled to fill the empty air with empty speech - small talk that is well-meaning but damaging to the psyche of a cranky, hyper-sensory, internet-dwelling girl like me who doesn't want to talk to anyone until she's ready (it's ok, I know I'm not sunshine and flowers), especially at 10 AM in the morning.

He is probably harmless to most other people but to me, I just don't have the capacity to process him yet sometimes (a lot of times) when all I want is to go to the kitchen to grab water and hydrate without talking to anyone. I'm just not a patient person, and I'm too passive to the self-crippling point. I also don't hate people, and have the knee-jerk tendency to want to express care and let everyone be heard even if I am dying inside and will hate both them and myself after-the-fact for a passionate 15-40 minutes. Yes, I'm aware that it’s a problem. 

</journal>

[stefinatelychen]

How has COVID-19 impacted your life?

Before COVID-19 happened, I was already barely making enough to live a simple life. I had shit for savings but I could afford rent and sleep in. I was working to stay alive and sane enough, for the most part; it was a life that I chose - current, achievable stability over long-term responsibility and security. I spent bus rides to and from work reading books (or listening to music and daydreaming about making grand-scale art installations), and I oscillated between being content with my lifestyle (grateful that I could afford to pay rent, eat vegetables, buy books and make art) and discontent with myself for no longer dreaming or working harder toward building a different greater reality for myself (a career involved in the arts). I know that for many people who work in the service industry, moving out of it isn’t an option to them at all. The service industry is held up by the hands of so many different types of people. You have mothers who are making sure that their kids are fed and educated; you have students who are trying to make sure that they can afford the textbooks for their classes and not have to depend on their parents for handouts (and some of them can’t in the first place); you have aspiring and struggling artists who refuse to conform to a 9 to 5 (creative inspiration doesn’t fall into your lap from 6 to 10pm) or an uptight business casual dress code who just want to make a healthy living. These are just some examples of the people who make you your piping hot morning coffee, put together your custom sandwich with care, memorize your order and make sure that it gets to you with a smile, and so on. I’m pretty uncertain about what I’m going to do to meet rent for the next couple (possibly more) months. A lot of my friends are doing their best to stay positive, getting creative, starting small online businesses, doing live streams of ther music and taking donations via venmo or cash app or what have you, etc. I feel compelled to do some version of that, and I might but already, the market is saturated, and it just doesn’t feel sustainable to me. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m going to be talking to some friends to see what I should do with my art, and if I should make the step at all in this current state of our world. Since all this has started, I have pivoted to looking for online remote work - capable as I am, the options look bleak. I’m back to the dizzying nightmare of looking for a job without enough experience in a recession. It’s like deja-vu; I left college around 2011 (so after the 2008 recession) and was obsessively poring over job boards every waking moment. Much of the problem was that I would get overwhelmed with fear of failure and perfectionism and I wouldn’t apply to most of what I was hopeful about. The language used on nearly every job description is alienating, and expectations for even entry-level jobs are that you have a proven track record of something. The dark, self-depricating side of me says that I’ve been proving that I can clean vomit and shit off of toilets, bus every table in sight, scrub floors, wash dishes, serve coffee and alcohol, and scoop ice cream for the last 5 years. I know the positive side of me is supposed to turn that smile on and write (over and over and over): 5 years of customer service experience. Everybody knows that no job is easy - every single job comes with its set of pros and cons. The service industry is no outlier; anyone who’s worked in it can tell you that, and back it up with endless stories of working around entitled customers, misunderstanding managers, and lazy coworkers that somehow snuck their way into the same role and pay as you but do half the work. But the service industry is also a degrading place to be. The work is hard, but nobody sees it as career experience (unless you are at the very top of management, or doing some marketing-related administrative work that is removed from the frontlines). I’ve worn the baggage of needing to shift from my service industry role to something else for a long time now. COVID-19 was just a weird kick in the ass to do it. I’m at my computer now for nearly all hours of the day, partly out of an inherent computer addiction that I’ve had since my first personal computer was introduced to me at age 10, and partly out of my introversion kicking into high-gear since the pandemic sent everyone semi-permanently home. My roommate is home all the time now and exists nearly as a permanent fixture to the living room at this point. Though he is pretty great, I can’t leave my room without bracing myself for it first. There’s more time now than ever before for both deep reflection and for reaching out over the internet. I’ve been texting and chatting with plenty of friends I didn’t really have a chance to talk to before, mostly because I was always working on a nocturnal bar schedule