2020

Today (January 4, 2021) would have marked four years of drawing everyday (started January 4, 2017). My daily routine struggled and failed to survive the disruption that was 2020, but we’ll get to that. Here are some personal highlights from the year, and if you’d like to you can also see my 2019 recap.

January 14:

An ‘about me’ from my 19 year old self. Seems like not much has changed on the likes/dislikes front, and at some point I retook the Myers-Briggs test and leaned more towards INFJ instead of my long-standing INTJ result.

Also while I’m writing this recap I was like ‘folktronica?’ but upon further consideration I think it’s just because I was trying to find the genre for Cosmo Sheldrake hah.

February 4:

I turned 20! I received a few gifts and spent the morning going to a bookstore to get a t-shirt, then had to go to history and ‘connections’ class. Spent the night alone with some pie.

I’m turning 21 in a month, but with everything going on it doesn’t change much. I feel like the pandemic has expedited the process of birthdays not feeling important anymore, at least for now. 21 is maybe the last of the legally important birthdays (except retirement age? but that’s a while away), though I have never cared about drinking so I am not eager to do that anyway.

February 15:

The first time I managed to go to Manhattan in 2020 was February 15th. Mother wanted me to get some ‘professional clothes’ in case I got any internship interviews (spoiler alert, I didn’t, but now I have some nice new clothes sitting in a storage unit). Saw the Oculus (apparently spelt that wrong) for the first time, and accidentally found Trinity Church and walked through the cemetery. Man I love history.

Later that day went to a movie with my then-suitemate and tried brown sugar milk boba, pretty good (held it with a gloved hand since it was so cold outside).

Ended February on the 29th with my last trip to Manhattan. It was for a design class site visit where we impersonated transfer students, then got some food and saw a very fancy dog store.

March 2:

The talk of coronavirus started pretty early in design class, with my professor predicting that we wouldn’t be able to come into studio anymore.

March 9:

Had a lot of anticipation and uneasiness with the growing talk about the virus and schools beginning to announce closures. It felt like dark clouds were gathering and waiting to pour.

March 11:

And I didn’t have to wait long. During class on a Wednesday we received the fateful email that we’d be starting online classes after an extended spring break.

March 12:

My approach to surviving the physical and mental stress of March 11th-March 14th was not thinking, just doing. Despite Res Life saying that they were expecting us to come back in April, my mom made me pack everything up in my dorm by myself and lug it two blocks to a storage unit. I had a lot of recently acquired large objects to suffer through transporting via a broken cart (air conditioner, 3D printer, microwave, large box of materials, several portfolios). It took two days to put everything in the storage unit.

The last night in New York I didn’t have anything of substance to eat (or any silverware to eat it with) so I went to Key Foods in search of a cup of ramen. Outside I overheard a lady on the phone saying ‘yeah surprisingly they still have toilet paper’- the beginning of that whole ordeal. I go inside and it’s the longest I’ve ever seen the line. The ramen wasn’t worth it at that point especially to spend so much time around people. This was before masks were advised to wear so this memory is especially weird for me to think back on. I spent that night eating yogurt for dinner (was originally saving it for breakfast) and sleeping on an empty bed with 2 pillows I would leave behind to be thrown away in the case I didn’t return. I put a post it note on my desk listing the few objects I left behind alongside a sewing needle that didn’t belong to me.

I went home on March 14th. The airport terminal was very empty, masks weren’t being worn yet and it’s not like you could buy any even if you wanted to. I wore plastic gloves on the trains and wrapped a scarf around my nose and mouth, still somewhat afraid I would look like I was overreacting (seeing a few other people also wear gloves was reassuring though). It was surreal landing in NC where everyone was business as usual while I felt radioactive.

April 4:

I survived late March/early April by playing Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing New Horizons in my free time. I also started watching a few Twitch streamers, since there is a comfort is having someone talking in real time in the background. Gardening was another way I found to pass the time and also force myself to go outside while the majority of my time was spent staring at a Zoom or Google Meet window.

I also found comfort in rewatching television shows (especially anime that I last saw in middle school hah), listening to podcasts or songs, and singing along to musicals. I did all of that while working on my design final, which was on the 30th of April.

May 25:

The majority of May was spent in my room trying to fill time. I can tell that it was rough for me to stick with drawing everyday when everyday felt the same. I started an online summer class just so I wouldn’t have to take it in the fall, and revisited a really old comic idea to see if I could breathe some life into it.

June 26:

My brother had to go back to Pittsburgh so he could continue his graduate school studies (he’d been unexpectedly home since his March spring break), and after we dropped him off we swung by my storage unit in New York to retrieve items I wasn’t originally able to bring home. Spent less than 24 hours in either place and barely stopped the entire trip, very exhausting.

The unfortunate thing is that the morning that we were driving to New York was the when the school sent an email saying that dorms were going to open in the fall (which turned out to be false) so I took things from my storage unit that I didn’t need anymore for school (like old models, my drafting board, vellum) while not taking any additional clothes, oops.

July 31:

I successfully drew everyday from January to June 30th. And then July… yeah that didn’t happen. I made this on July 31st as a recap and an attempt to start it up again, which was successful for August.

The garden was pretty fruitful and I helped my parents retile and plaster the pool. I rescued some toad eggs, which turned into tadpoles and then small toads I got to release. I meant to write about them on this blog and include more photos but ended up writing a small article about them for the school newspaper because they matched the ‘Transition’ theme.

I think dorms were announced to be closed for the fall semester around this time too, which gave me a whole lot of mixed feelings.

I also made my 2nd Year of Architecture School Zine so I was occupied drawing that.

August 8:

August was a month for a lot of thinking. I’m a to-do list maker but with the future being so uncertain it’s hard to plan very far ahead.

August 21:

I was part of orientation staff for the week before my virtual fall semester started. It was a cool experience (though of course it would have more fun if it was during normal circumstances and we could be together physically) and I’d enjoy doing it again. I enjoyed meeting and getting to hear the thoughts of the incoming class who had to decide on a college largely without even visiting it beforehand.

Also that week I went to visit my friend at her new apartment where she was living by herself so it was the safest opportunity to see her in person. It was really great to see her again even if it wasn’t for long.

September 12:

Drawing everyday did not survive September, when I really started working on my online classes. Brain was mostly in ‘just do your assignments’ mode in which I just wanted time to pass so I could get closer to future semesters where we could be in person again.

Also in September I released a lot of the toads I had raised.

October 19:

I drew only a few times in October. Things were kind of rough before the pandemic, just the stress of school and 17-18 credit hours a semester, but then having classes completely online (which has pros and cons) and the world being rocked politically, environmentally, and with the pandemic it has been a lot to handle. I’m privileged and things could always be a lot worse but I hope my life is such that these times will be something that I learn a lot from but not something I ever ‘miss’, if that makes sense. I hope things get better.

November 7:

The days leading up to the election results were very nerve-racking, refreshing that map over and over. When it was clear that Biden had won, I figured hey, there’s a timeline where he didn’t win and things could be perhaps much worse. I wish I could feel more relieved but a new president is just the start to (hopefully positive) change, not a solution.

November 21:

I drew about 20 days of November but I got swept away with finals. This is one of the last drawings I made this year digitally. Finals were rough and unhealthily consumed all of my time but I made it through and I’m very proud of the work I was able to accomplish especially alongside my design partner.

I think the roughest part of the online environment is that there is not much room for casual conversation. No chit chatting before lecture or running into people in the hall or on the elevator, no casual runs to go get food with someone else. I’m thankful for my design partner who I got to talk to the most often, both about our classwork and about life in general, even though we were confined to our little Zoom rectangles.

Otherwise I sat alone in my room for the entire semester, only talking to my parents for a couple minutes a day at dinner.

December 15:

In December it was obvious that something needed to change, at least for a bit, so I found an old empty sketchbook on the 9th and scribbled in it with whatever pens were laying around and kept doing so for a while. Most of my pages are incoherent doodles alongside thoughts and to do lists but it’s been a nice change to draw beyond what I used to do digitally.

Winter break has been very restful and I’ve started crocheting a scarf. Compared to my attempts at embroidery, making something functional in 3D is pretty rewarding. I’d been wanting to start assembling a dollhouse during this break but for the moment it feels overwhelming. Otherwise I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft with friends and need to work on finding something to do this summer.

So this was a lil personal reflection of my year. 2021 won’t magically fix our problems but I’m hopeful that things can start to swing back into the right direction.

I hope you’re staying safe and best of luck in the new year!