{"id":20304,"date":"2020-11-25T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-11-25T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=20304"},"modified":"2020-11-24T12:58:33","modified_gmt":"2020-11-24T20:58:33","slug":"student-editors-letter-coping-with-lockdown-2-0","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2020\/11\/25\/student-editors-letter-coping-with-lockdown-2-0\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Editor\u2019s Letter: Coping with Lockdown 2.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reality of lockdowns is that they cause me to shut down emotionally, and it\u2019s next to impossible to count on the future I envisioned for myself.<\/p>\n

Picture this: a dusty orange winter sunrise leaks through foggy windowpanes in the Fisher building. I had spent the morning before going to school as a young father does, running around the house, packing lunches, doing dishes, all while holding Tobias, we\u2019ll call him, who, at this point, might be six months old. He wants his Pablum, his breakfast. My wife is drying her hair over the sink until she blows a fuse, plunging the bathroom into black.<\/p>\n

Judging by the scream that ensues, she\u2019s electrocuted herself. She hasn\u2019t, she assures me.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s family mayhem. Good mayhem, but still mayhem.<\/p>\n

While still part of the family, Preston and Penelope\u2014my two cats\u2014are no longer the centre of it since kids arrived. They sing in their feline choir: a slew of meows until I finally bend down and drop treats onto the salmon-tiled floor. It has become \u201cThe Ballad of the Forgotten Treats.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Camosun College’s Interurban campus during COVID-19 (photo by Greg Pratt\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like I said, they\u2019re no longer the centre of attention\u2014which cats hate\u2014having been put in their place by Jr. and her\/his\/their entourage of toy fire trucks, train sets, stuffed animals, board books, and Goldfish crackers thrown with a jocose vehemence into musty toilet bowls.<\/p>\n

\u201cToby, stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

He looks up, smiles in that innocent way only a child can. Then he throws another.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I say. \u201cYou eat the crackers. Don\u2019t throw them.\u201d<\/p>\n

To him, this means what it does to every child: throw more, and much harder.<\/p>\n

This is a look inside my imagination, my future. But when you\u2019re knee-deep in a survival that, for once, is not the result of a selfish depression, but is instead a longstanding, cohesive societal situation, such things are hard to envision. If you\u2019re anything like me\u2014someone who spent years convinced, for one reason or another, that I wasn\u2019t deserving of this future\u2014it\u2019s easy for the events of this year to make you think that hard work is bound to fail, that the world is just so riddled with injustice that it\u2019s bound to fail.<\/p>\n

It won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

We won\u2019t let it.<\/p>\n

The last thing we needed was something to make getting by, being better, being good, and excelling even harder. COVID-19 has made life harder, but hang on to visions of hope with clenched fists and we can prove to ourselves, and to this invisible enemy, how deserving we really are. While it\u2019s always been simple, it\u2019s never been easy. But that truth was always there; there\u2019s always something to make life harder if you look, and something to make it easier, as well.<\/p>\n

When it comes to those feelings of deep injustice and emptiness bubbling inside you right now, hang your hats on COVID if you must, but this lager, extra dry, bitter-stale martini of a year has pushed our own personal conflicts\u2014the ones that used to bubble wordlessly like a ghost in the back of our cores\u2014to the forefront. It\u2019s forced me to look harder, breathe deeper, and take even more care in constructing my life; the pain of it has made me all the more certain I want to live it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reality of lockdowns is that they cause me to shut down emotionally, and it\u2019s next to impossible to count on the future I envisioned for myself. Picture this: a dusty orange winter sunrise leaks through foggy windowpanes in the Fisher building. I had spent the morning before going to school as a young father […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-webexclusive","category-views"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20305,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20304\/revisions\/20305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}