Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash
I don't know about you, but it feels like quarantine has turned me into my curious six year old self again. Being maybe a touch too aware of my own inevitable ignorance, my brain's production of stupid questions is at an all time high. The only difference now is that I can't test my dad's patience with all my pressing enquiries anymore. They're of course just as important and valid as they were back then. Although perhaps a little more existentially significant (Once I was seconds away from blowing up a corner of my kitchen before googling whether I can microwave a tin of baked beans. Metal spoon still inside.) I can't be the only one who's been teaching herself adulting with the help of a non-autonomous (although we're getting there) search engine?
Google is perhaps the closest thing to an all-knowing, omnipotent God I'll ever believe in. Whenever I need it, I pray it has the answers to questions I'm sure someone else could give me too, but I'm too ashamed to ask. Because I'm in constant correspondence with Google, my search history has accidentally turned into a diary. If a serial killer would want to stalk me, he'd just have to hack into my computer and look at my Google searches. They document pretty much everything I do, keeping track of where my mind and I wander each day. Let's see where we went during quarantine last week.
Monday
Seven consecutive days don't really feel like a week anymore, so I'm just going to say that I spent the recurring beginning of another indefinite period by working on my law & ethics assignment, saving myself from getting killed by lentils during dinner, and finding answers to brain terminology in search for a metaphor. I also did some research for my sourdough baby which, if you've read my last post, you'll know is doing really well! Although not entirely satisfying, I guess the sides of a brain are called temporal lobes, but I ended up going for the cerebellum and brain stem as they felt like better metaphors for supportive hands, which is a (I admit lazy because I gave up in the end) metaphor I used in a blog post last week. Monday's searches also made me worry about how many times I've avoided to get food poisoning because I trust the internet more than my instincts, but then again, here we are.
(Damn, two plugs in one paragraph. Maybe "How to make quarantine Mondays more depressing" should be my next post)
Tuesday
Tuesday was just another day of tricking my brain into thinking that everything is fine, and this pandemic has definitely not influenced my motivation to finish assignments for a uni that currently only exists online. The ability to change our Zoom backgrounds was not exactly what I had in mind when discussing the future of VR, but I'm reminded to keep expectations low for now. I'm also going to pretend that I didn't just google the time for the notorious afternoon slump because I was looking for an excuse to stop working. Let's just go to my Whatsapp tab that I've kept open since Tuesday to spice up my family's group chat which is currently infected by poor boomer memes and propaganda ridden COVID-19 warnings. It's fair to say the Internet has not been an escape for me.
Wednesday
Everyone's been talking about the new baking craze that seems to have taken over our quarantine lifestyles. But why has no one mentioned the massive home-makeover-phase of isolation yet? Surely it would make more sense to have an urge to change the only surroundings we're going to see for a while? Even if this only means painting our walls or getting a shrine for everyone's panic-bought toilet paper? Instead we're baking bread. I never claimed that our species was rational, which is clearly reflected in my Wednesday search for freezers and hipster plant displays I can't afford. After hours of midnight browsing for the perfect freezer, my boyfriend and I came to the conclusion that Montpellier and Smeg freezers are definitely the sexiest ones among all. Unfortunately, beauty comes with a price and would therefore place a metaphorical bomb in both of our bank accounts. Guess we'll remain freezer-less for now.
Thursday
If you're still reading this way too elaborate diary post, I'm just going to warn you: My Thursday on-goings neither exposed my lack of adulting skills nor dug into the terminology of brains. Two friends of mine and I are actually working on a fundraiser project to raise money for people we believe have been overlooked during this crisis. We're still working on the content and the website, but our first focus will be on GAiN who's helping refugees in an overfilled camp called Moria on Lesbos. If you'd like to read more about it before going to the fundraiser, just click here. Right, my PSA is over. Back to being an isolated idiot.
Friday
I could probably make up some bad excuse about how quarantine has eliminated the idea of weekdays and that's why I forgot to document last Friday, but the truth is that I was probably busy sleeping or eating. Instead, have a picture of an animal that looks like it's as sorry as I am:
(It's called a squirrel glider?)
Saturday
These might as well have been the searches of a middle-aged divorcee who's finally free to find herself. Learning how to paint naked women and growing coriander at home is all I aspire to do when I grow old. In case you're interested, I ended up choosing When Harry Met Sally and noticed that they actually invented Netflix Party in that one scene where they chatted on the phone while watching a film together at their respective homes. If you can't remember that part, I'd highly recommend you to watch it again. It's the perfect film to fall asleep to with a wine glass dangling from your hand, especially if you time it with the point of your night at which loneliness starts knocking on your door again. We all know he could use a drink, too.
Sunday
Looking back on my Sunday searches and still having to google two names on there makes me question whether it's worth attempting to learn anything at all. I'm too forgetful but enjoy the aha-moments the act of re-googling just gave me. As you can tell, I wasn't too happy with my curry and probably burnt the bottom of the pot while looking for my answer (I ended up using cornflour and water and I can proudly say that cheating this time actually worked!!) but at least I can let you know about the perfect anti-dote to all the Tiger King madness. If you need to restore your faith in men handling tigers, I'd highly recommend watching Kevin Richardson, also known as The Lion Whisperer on YouTube (for very good reasons.) I mean, he literally understands his animals when they are talking and sometimes nonchalantly translates it as if he's reciting phrases from his last Duolingo session. Even if you don't care about how a real animal sanctuary is looked after, there's an abundance of footage of him cuddling big cats which I dare to say scores higher on the cuteness scale than any dog post I've seen on Twitter. God knows we need wholesome content like that now more than ever.
Did I learn anything about myself other than the fact that my life is as sporadic as it was pre-quarantine? Not really. Did it freak me out to see how easily my life could be put into Google searches? 100%. Frankly, these are strange times we're living in. I wonder how many times Google has been bombarded with questions about how to cook, what the price of an egg chair is, and why I should care about a celebrity that's suddenly talked about on Twitter. If Google was a parent, let's hope he'd find our questions just as good as my dad pretended they were, back when bread making or growing herbs at home seemed like wizardry (they still do.) If he didn't like them, I hope that he was at least amused.