During my online class on the 2nd of February 2021, I had realized that, for the past month, I had been dating all my dates with 2020. It had not even occurred to me that the year had ended. It feels like the entire year has been in statis. COVID-19 has seemingly put a stop to my life and the goals I set out for myself.

I had plans to be significantly more social, potentially move in with a friend, explore new hobbies, continue improving on my nutrition, working out and improve at jiujitsu and even consider joining a tournament. In January of 2020, I briefly fell sick over the weekend. While I got over it pretty quick, my voice was somehow sounding super congested. I eventually got over it in about a months time, but then I strangely fell sick a second time over superbowl weekend. I didn’t even do anything or go anywhere. According to my coworker, I sounded sick well into April. Because of the pandemic moratorium on my life, I feel like I’ve gone in the opposite direction is so many parts of my life. I’ve seen maybe 4 different people who I don’t live with in real life, my nutrition suffered extensively, and I can’t work out or do jiujitsu. For the first couple months of the lockdown, I ended up lose 20lbs. I did gain some of the weight back, but I already know it will be a long arduous journey to get back to the level of activity and health I was at before the pandemic.

Not everything went bad. Obviously life goes on, regardless if there is a lockdown or not. I expanded my media consumption greatly over the year, watching over a hundred movies and expanding my musical ear and tastes. I actually updated this website and added some content. I made some closer friends, many of which I meet weekly and played my new main hobby in the pandemic Dungeons and Dragons. Throughout the pandemic I kept my job, earned money and significantly cut down on my expenses (it’s not like I’m going to go to the movies anytime soon). I also slogged through most of my masters program (about half) online which is more miserable and will be expected to do the same for remaining classes.

Looking forwards to 2021 and 2022, I hope that social avenues will open up again and I can continue to work on myself socially and physically. Though I’m generally happy with myself in terms of friends or how I look physically. The lack of change and progress does bother me. I don’t really have any new year resolutions or anything, but I generally do have goals and think about what timelines I want to accomplish them in, be it a week, a couple months, a year or a couple of years. For now, it’s mostly wait until things get back to normal and continue the goals I had in the end of 2019 as I haven’t made any good progress since then. Recently though, I’ve really liked the idea of picking up a musical hobby. Doing so would let me have a more creative outlet, let me learn about something I have zero education on, and would give me better language to describe what I think about music I listen to. Hopefully the following years won’t be as exceptional.