Unless you’ve been in the middle of the desert (I’m looking at you Jared Leto), you know about COVID-19, or Coronavirus. It has stuck people in their houses, closed restaurants and put life as we know it at a standstill. My job is closed and I’m stuck at my apartment all by myself. I’ve been trying to keep a normal routine as long as possible, but closures keep extending and frankly, I’m sick of it. Luckily, I’ve still got my classes to keep me busy. I was assigned to tell a story through photos about how COVID-19 is affecting my life.
Everyday I wake up at around eight or nine or ten. I stopped setting an alarm, so I wake up when I’m ready. I’ve been feeling stressed and have started to neglect my windowsill of plants. Hopefully I won’t have too many fatalities when this is over.Even though I haven’t left my apartment in days, I still make it a point to get ready. My morning routine is important to me and when I lose it, I lose my sanity. I have quite the collection of makeup and look forward to painting my face each morning.When I signed up for classes last November, I chose to enroll in two online classes. Little did I know, all my classes would be online. I make sure to set aside time to do a little bit of work every day on my MacBook.Since I’m not working anymore, I’ve discovered I have an abundance of free time. I’ve started decorating my apartment and put some tinsel in the living room. With no roommates to judge my design attempts, I am free to do anything within my lease.When I get bored of decorating, I paint. I bought 10 canvases before I moved in last August and had only used one up until this week. My mom has made some requests of paintings to bring home. I’m running out of white.
I was assigned a photography assignment to take headshots of a person. Unfortunately, due to the outbreak of COVID-19, I haven’t been around people lately. I’ve been alone at my apartment for a week now and I was starting to get nervous about how I would complete this assignment. Lucky for me, my family lives an hour and a half away and agreed to meet me for a social distancing picnic in Sheridan, MI. We met at a park beside a little lake and ate mac ‘n cheese and sat six feet apart from each other. I popped a macro lens on my Canon Rebel and was able to shoot my sister, Abby, from a respectable distance. It was photography practice for me and posing practice for senior photos for her. It was great to see my family while also doing homework on such a beautiful day. I was definitely starting to get a little cabin fever.
Join Lauren Brewer and Tess Ware as they discuss important literary themes in the genres of science fiction and fantasy.
This week’s episode is all about trauma and its effect on the books Pet Sematary by Stephen King and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Also, hear from guests Olivia and Madison about how they relate trauma to literature.
Lauren Brewer's JRN 340 Blog 