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Quarantine. I'm gonna be totally honest with you, I-I'm sure a lot of you might not like this opinion. I hated it. It was so terrible. There's only so many days you could just sit there and rot away before you're like, "I don't even wanna do this anymore." And it all started on one fateful day, alright? If you were a Lil Uzi fan, you know that Eternal Atake dropped. Everybody had their earbuds on, and I mean everybody.
There was not a single soul not listening to the album. And all of a sudden, an announcement dropped about the virus, and it said we would have a week off from school. Now, there was already talks about it, and I heard stuff about it on the news. I was hyped to finally have some time off. What my school did is they pretty much moved spring break to that week, so we could just have that week off instead. Then it became two weeks, and then all of a sudden, they were like, alright, we're doing classes on Zoom now.
But after like about three weeks to a month, i'm like dude I can't even do this anymore like this sucks I don't want to sit in the house anymore and at that time Not only was I trying to start up a youtube channel I also had a job and for somebody that was working part-time like I would sometimes have like seven hour shifts Like that's pretty long for a part-time job And the only reason why I had a job still is because I worked at a grocery store
Everybody else got laid off. My brother got laid off and my ass still was working. And the job that I had was already garbage as it was. All retail jobs are just not enjoyable at all, but you kind of just have to do it. Now, it wasn't like the hardest job ever. It was just so painfully boring. But at least, I mean, I had a job. Like, it wasn't great, but, you know, I was still making money in some way. But of course, it was not a good job.
So you could just imagine six to seven hours of just scanning shit over and over. Getting yelled at by Karens, threw a face mask. It was all just muffled screaming. I didn't even know what they were saying half the time. I had to hope I didn't catch this virus. You know, everybody else was in the house. You know, I was out there on the front lines. Okay, it wasn't that intense. But somebody had to do it. And you know, I happened to be stuck at that grocery store.
And after a day of work and school, I just didn't even do anything. Like, I didn't even want to work on my YouTube channel, but I don't know, I kind of just forced myself to do it anyway. There's only so many days you can do that without just driving yourself insane. Like, yeah, sure, I got a little bit of socialization at work. Not much. We had to stand six feet apart. I also just had a very big piece of plastic in front of my register.
to keep the germs from spreading, and it was just so awkward. Like, the way I had to, like, hand people their groceries. The store would just be completely out of products half the time, and it was completely dead sometimes. And I literally only had, like, two or three people with me working at the same time, so I would kind of just stand around and do nothing.
But there were some days where the store was just brutal. It got so crowded to the point where somebody had to stand outside to keep a count of how many people were in the store. And all the registers were open. Not a single one was closed. And the lines were just full. And people deadass thought the world was ending or something. So they were buying carts full of groceries. I once had, I'm not even kidding you,
A $600 grocery order. I'm like, holy shit, is this a new record? They had carts full of meat that they were just gonna put in the freezer just in case if anything went wrong. And we can't forget, toilet paper and hand sanitizer were non-existent.
And it was like finding the one piece if you found that shit I never thought those two things would be a luxury to have in the house It was like they both had the same stock count as the ps5. It was ridiculous and in real life, you know Even though I do all this youtube shit. I'm probably the most introverted person you'll ever meet and even I felt like I wasn't getting enough socialization Besides the very little socialization I had at work and you know what i'm kind of glad I had that now
Or else I probably would have went insane. There's only so many shows, so many YouTube videos and other things that you could do to entertain yourself without people around you. After so many months, I felt like I was in one of those white isolated rooms with nothing in it. It was a rarity to go outside and see a person. Everybody was just so afraid of getting the virus that they just didn't even want to chance it.
And I'm pretty sure I only got the virus once, which is very impressive for being at a grocery store for that long. And the only thing I could really do to talk to my friends was talk to them through Discord or Xbox parties. And you know, at first we were like, "Holy shit, unlimited time to play games? Bro, this is insane." But afterward, you know, we all got tired of it, of course.
We wanted to see each other in real life, you know? We all just got lonely as hell. But Zoom classes were so terrible. Like, I don't even know why the school just considered that idea. We should have just fucking dropped half the school year. We were sitting there. Nobody had their cameras on. I was not turning my camera on, bro.
I looked chopped as hell every morning. I was fresh out of bed. I didn't even shower before these damn Zoom classes. And nobody was paying attention either. I was just listening to music, playing games, or something like that. And I'm sure everybody else was doing the same. And there was also Zoom gym class? Like, I don't know how the hell they pulled that off. And when it was over, I was just glad. I wanted nothing to do with Zoom at all.
And there was also so many technical difficulties. My mic once turned on and I said something I shouldn't have and I don't want to talk about it. And it was just hella embarrassing and I'm glad it's over. And you can't forget the pranks, alright? At least somebody in one of your Zoom classes did a prank. Everybody was trying to blow up on TikTok around that time and
Well, that was just the meta. And of course, at this point in time, TikTok's popularity just skyrocketed even more than it already was. TikTok was already pretty popular among people in my generation. But when this lockdown happened, a lot of people had absolutely nothing to do, so they would just spend their time scrolling on TikTok.
And that's just how it became a big thing for people to sit there and scroll all day. Like sometimes when I would scroll on TikTok, I would literally just get lost for hours. There was no saving me. Like that's probably the reason why I don't even remember quarantine that much. You know, I was just doing the same shit over and over again. And I was constantly scrolling TikTok.
But as you know, we approach the summer of 2020, you know, things started looking up. Cases started dropping. You know, I was able to actually go out and see my friends and family again. And I was finally starting to go outside again. Thank God. I didn't know what I was going to do if I was just locked in the house all that time. I saw a lot of other people do this too, like in my neighborhood. But we would just all walk around the street for like an hour because nobody wanted to just be locked inside like that anymore.
Everybody wanted the feeling of grass. You know, the summer sun was really nice. There was no more sitting inside for me. We still had to wear a mask everywhere, but it honestly wasn't as bad as it was before. And I felt like finally things are starting to look up. And then cases started going up again as more people went outside. And of course, when the fall hit, I was stuck back in Zoom classes. Now, obviously, at first, I didn't mind it at all, but eventually it just got really painful.
But then in October, we went back to hybrid school where some people would come in and some people would be on Zoom. And on Zoom classes, everybody would play games like Among Us and Fall Guys. Those were the most popular games at the time. And I do not look back at those games that the
ounce of nostalgia. I'm sure some of you might. After their peaks, I tried playing the games like in later years. I don't know. They just didn't really hit. I did like getting on Among Us playing in like 2020, 2021 in class. Nowadays, I don't know. I don't really enjoy it. There's only so much you can do. And the memes about the game kind of just ruined it. And Fall Guys, I don't know. It's just Fall Guys.
It's a decent game, but nothing I would be like super nostalgic for and at this time I also had to look for colleges Yay Yeah, I fucking hated that shit so much I barely looked at any colleges because we would go on the campus and there was not a single soul out It was literally just you're supposed to tour the school yourself. I didn't have any tour guide at the school at all
And I also had to do a virtual tour where I had to walk around as pretty much a bitmoji. Like, I don't know how else to describe it. And I would have to talk to professors through the mic. Like, it was the goofiest thing ever. And I was somehow not yet fired from my grocery store job. I don't know what kind of miracle I had to work for that to happen. But, well, it happened.
Then later in December of 2020, I had my first bit of success on YouTube. So I literally just stopped going to school altogether to just focus on that throughout early 2021. Now I would just go AFK during the Zoom meetings and I wouldn't even show up on the days I was supposed to be in school. And at this point, it's like, holy shit, bro, you're dragging it. Like I just wanted to get the hell out of here.
Most teachers knew that, so nobody really cared. And I'm sure a lot of you that graduated around the time I did can relate to this. We had our graduation on a football field. And of course, the principal had to get up there and give a speech about how we're all so brave and
And it was very upsetting that, you know, we had half our high school taken away. And I didn't really care, to be honest with you. I just wanted to get my diploma and get out of there. And towards the end of the year, you know, things were actually starting to look up. I started hanging out with my friends a lot more. We actually had our senior prom.
And by summer I was able to go to the beach and chill. I had to worry about college, of course, but for the most part I had a really great summer. So I kind of look back on that with nostalgia instead of quarantine. By that time we didn't have to wear masks anymore. No one gave a shit. And I was happy about that because holy shit, the masks were annoying. Like sometimes the mask would just feel weird because I had my fucking hot ass breath in it for so long.
But it unfortunately wasn't over yet when I went to school in the fall of 2021 things were looking up You know, it was my first year of college. My youtube channel was doing pretty well and literally after a month I already had to wear a goddamn mask again, but in 2022 cases finally started dropping very low There was no more variants or anything like that and it was over and it's crazy that quarantine already started four years ago and I feel like time has just been flying by ever since then and
