2020 will be remembered by posterity as *the* watershed year. The year when the great pandemic hit and forced everyone to re-evaluate their relationship with themselves and the outside world. Hell, people might even look back at it fondly as the time before the great climate disasters and capitalist dystopia. But there was a time in 2020 before the carpet was pulled from under our feet, where people walked outside without a mask on their face, where you hugged a friend without the mental gymnastics of wondering whether you’ve sanitized your hands, and a time when people were forced to travel hours to complete work they could’ve easily done from home (seriously, what was up with that?).
I decided to write a weekly journal around that time, chronicling my life and the little details you tend to forget as time goes by. Last week I was revisiting these diary entries and it seemed like I was transported to another world altogether. It’s easy to miss how much things change on the daily when you don’t reflect back on them, and it’s scary to think how much you can forget or misremember when you don’t write about it.
It was also surprising to see, now that I look back on it, the sheer amount of things I did in the span of a single week. Of course, compared with sitting at home for about a year, any outing seems like an adventure now, but even back then I felt like I was just going through the motions of life, with nothing “big“ happening in it.
Here’s how I spent my first week of 2020:
2020, Week 1
1st Jan, Wednesday:
The start to the new year began with sort of a changed mindset. Now, I'm not one who's big on New Year's Resolutions, "new year, new me" and all that, but waking up and spending the 1st of January the way I did seemed like a good day and (hopefully) a harbinger for things to come.
It started off by coming home early the previous night. I don't believe in partying on 31st. It's overrated, overpriced, and overcrowded. I'd honestly spend the day at home watching a movie or drawing something, which is exactly what I did.
At work yesterday, we left at about 4 to go to a cafe in South Bombay and have some evening snacks. Just 4 people who turned up to work that day, and we had a good time. After that, I was willing to meet Akash and Vijeet and leave at 9 while they continued partying till 12, but they wanted to _meet_ at 9pm and that was pushing it for me, so I bailed. After reaching home, Mitali called cause she was in the area with Gunit, but I couldn't pick up because I was eating and then didn't call back either. Anyway, that was my 31st, which brings me to the next day.
The fact that we had a holiday at work probably contributed to the general sense of well-being I felt. I decided to finally explore Sister Library, which I had been meaning to do for a while now. It was as good as I imagined it to be, with a wonderful collection of graphic novels (which are something I'm really on the lookout for right now). Plus, they had a cat (!!) who was super friendly and slept in my lap while I read. Honestly, it doesn't get better than that.
I ended up taking a membership for the library and borrowed the beautiful book "This One Summer" (which introduced me to the wonderful Jillian Tamaki's illustrations, and I used some pages from the book as drawing reference later on).
After the library, I went to a Starbucks to get some work done, but I kept incessantly sneezing, like every 5-10 seconds, no exaggeration. I felt so nauseous I had to leave from there and since I was hungry, I wandered into the KFC nearby for a quick bite. In other circumstances that would have been a good meal, but the sneezing continued, and let me just tell you, sneezing every 10 seconds with your mouth full is an extreme sport. I hurried out of there and went home to take a nap. I guessed the sneezing might have been brought about by being in close proximity with a cat for a prolonged period of time, but nothing in my history with cats gives me reason to believe that was the cause. Oh well, guess it's just one of those things.
2nd Jan, Thursday:
Day 2 continued in the same vein as the previous one, in terms of the general sense of well-being. It started off with another slow day at work (courtesy most of the people being on leave).
After work, Mitali, Gunit and I planned on meeting up to chill. A series of misadventures followed.
First, Gunit and I decided to meet beforehand since Mitali would take a while to get done. We decided to both meet at Starbucks in the meantime. Except, like smart people, we never decided which Starbucks we would be meeting at. I sauntered on to the one at Infiniti mall while Gunit moved on to Dadar. A series of calls, messages, even a new group chat with the three of us, culminated in finally deciding to meet at Andheri station where we would go on to Churchgate for snacks.
We then stopped by at an Irani cafe, had bun maska with chai and then walked around some more before we stopped to have dinner.
At dinner, I had the great idea to order a plate of Garlic Chicken at a Mughlai restaurant, which we all proceeded to hate, and which was enough of a reason for them to give me shit for a long time after this incident, and for them to be put off by my choices forever.
3rd Jan, Friday:
On Friday, at work we decided to go for the India vs Sri Lanka game that would be held in Pune the following week (which coincided well for my plan to visit Pune the next week and partake in the Finer Lunch Club event that we had planned, but more on that later).
Friday after work, I decided to make a stop at Leaping Windows since we got done early and I had some time to spend. The book for that day was Watchmen, and let me just say, that was a book that was long overdue and which I should have picked up before. There's nothing about Watchmen that hasn't been said before me in better words, but suffice it to say I had a great time, and will be returning to complete reading it.
At night, I was pleasantly surprised as a long-time follower of wackyposters made a fanart (fanart of a fanart, fanartception) of my Sarah Lynn poster, which of course was a major ego-boost, so that was nice.
4th Jan, Saturday:
The first weekend of the new year, I met my old friends, Arkav, Nishi, Akash and Meenakshi. It was a fun meet. And in classic "squad" fashion, we ordered way more than we could eat. I had crab soup, which was surprisingly great.
Also got some portrait sketching done, mostly by copying the characters from This One Summer. Nevertheless, was pleased with my work.
5th Jan, Sunday:
This week's football match got canceled because there weren't enough players available, and because I had backed out since I was supposed to meet the squad today (which got pushed to the day before), which means I could have attended the match. But oh well, c'est la vie.
Went to Starbucks today and got a comic done based on Darcey's tweet and pretty happy with how it came out
6th Jan, Monday:
Met Mitali, Gunit and Shriya at Leaping Windows today, where the objective of the meet was to also design the menu and invitation for the Finer Lunch Club meet which was going to be held in Pune the following weekend. I came up with a great design, with the help of some Behance inspiration, along with the suggestions of the three of them.
7th Jan, Tuesday:
Was a relatively slow day today. Went to work, came home. However I stopped at Lokhandwala on the way home to buy a towel for the Pune trip. All the ones I have are huge, full length towels which are very inconvenient to travel with as they take up the whole storage of the bag. This one is a medium sized, black towel, which will also come in handy for any future trips.
I did continue writing a weekly log for like a couple of weeks, and then picked up daily journaling sporadically during the lockdown. One of my long-term goals is to make this a daily habit simply because I don’t trust my memory to remember the small details of my everyday life, and also because it’s fun to come across these things a long time after; fun enough to write a newsletter edition about it too!
Stuff I’m Listening To:
Links of the Week:
The Seven Sins of Memory: Speaking of memory and forgetfulness, Anne-Laure Le Cunff talks about the different ways in which our memory fails us in this article
When Things Go Missing: An article and essay about being scatter-brained and losing and misplacing things
See you next week!
Don’t “forget” to subscribe if you haven’t yet,
Raef