Day 135: Here Goes Nothing
Day 135: August 8, 2020
Global Cases: 19, 795, 077; Deaths: 728, 796
Egypt Cases: 95, 314; Deaths: 4, 992
Nada Wahba
Multimedia Journalism Graduating Senior
It’s been approximately five months since I began to self-quarantine, except for the time when there was an enforced lockdown that kept everyone in check – at least somewhat.
Ever since then, I’ve come up with different ways to try and busy myself amid those strange times, not because I was bored but out of the fear of discovering what might happen if I don’t.
As far as trial and error goes, I’d say I got really creative. I discovered that I was bad at a lot of things and subpar at others. The past two months flew by, not because I kept busying myself and finding new ways to cope but each day became a long extension of the day before it and I slowly gave up and watched myself turn into a creature that is driven by pure survival needs; food and shelter – or in other words, just sleep.
I sometimes get these bursts of energy and motivation. I get up one morning, I decide it’s a good day to go for a run and jug three liters or so of water in one sitting. It’s worrying, however, because then it makes me itch for finding a new activity, for going out.
The feeling persisted, for someone who hasn’t seen the streets in five months, patience was hanging by a thread.
FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – I thought the one thing I wouldn’t have to deal with this year is FOMO since quarantine supposedly should apply to everyone, but as I scroll through Instagram I find distant friends somewhere on the beach and every day I scroll, the beach gets busier.
Nobody told me the coronavirus threat is over.
The urge to resist going out and succumbing to socializing was overriding everything else. Above all, I’m graduating next semester and all I could think of was that I am not ready for another online semester just yet.
It feels like I’ve wasted my entire summer when I could have been doing something fun – which isn’t necessarily the case but that’s what FOMO does, it makes one stupid.
There it was, I had given up.
It’s a week later and we’re in the North Coast. I kept giving myself excuses to why I needed to do this “because I can’t go into my last semester without having any energy, from doing absolutely nothing to using up the last bit of will and power in what seems to be a long semester ahead”.
I’m on the beach, basking in the sun that hasn’t burned my skin in a while and I could only think of one thing. Not the privilege of a new view, not the relief from FOMO, but my last semester.
It’s down to the last month right before my very last semester and I’m so not ready. Even though I’ve found a way to break my relentlessly slow routine, which ultimately means I get to enjoy the last few weeks of summer without thinking about what’s yet to come but this, too, backfired.
It actually put pressure on this mini vacation, that I have to enjoy every bit of it because that’s all I have before I get thrust into another cycle of online learning that I was not fond of last semester.
Funny, isn’t it?
For The Caravan‘s previous diary entries in Arabic and English go to our COVID-19 Special Coverage page.
