COVID 19 Lockdown Era Drawings - 2020 Sketchbook

 

During the lockdown era of COVID 19 around early March 2020 to late April 2020 a lot of things were happening around the world all the while a lot of nothing was happening at home simultaneously.

I was sent home from my job until further notice. I was one of the lucky people who received a paycheck every two weeks for over three months from their job despite doing essentially nothing for work. 

I was lucky to have been dating someone at the time the lock downs happened. I would have gone insane if I had to go through it alone. Companionship is underrated. Connection is everything.

I was attending Baruch College at the time for my MBA in Healthcare Administration. I went from the annoyance of commuting every Tuesday and Thursday evening to using a platform I never heard of until the pandemic - Zoom. 

I had never participated in remote learning before then. I had never done remote work.  I had never stayed indoors for that long until the pandemic. 

While people were dying from this disease by the truck load at Jamaica Hospital just a few minutes away from where I lived, I was learning jazz guitar, drawing, recording music, studying for my MBA, and growing my hair out.

Eventually around late April 2020, my friends and girlfriend at the time began to venture out on long hikes and small weekend get aways with me.

It was a very productive time creatively, especially with regards to music. I re-learned to play the piano and read music again. 

I learned jazz standards that were challenging for me to learn when I was younger. I learned to play almost every single page of music from a Hal Leonard book for jazz chord melody.

I look back at that era still confused.

I am still angry with how people acted during that time - the political divide, the violence, the lack of empathy for others, the refusal of understanding, the appeal to authority instead of critical thinking and common sense. 

I am happy I was able to pursue my creative passions with a corporate sponsorship similar to the characters from the book, Fight Club. I was literally paid to just wait. I did whatever the hell I wanted at home and traveled. No questions were asked of my whereabouts or what I was doing.

I understand a lot more about myself having spent so much time alone. 

I know that I'm capable of leadership - I led my peers through difficult assignments; I competed in a case study at Yale against top business school students and was able to hold my own. 

I accomplished things I did not know I was capable of accomplishing - studying for and passing the GRE, getting into business school after years outside of an academic setting, passing statistics, operations management, accounting, finance - all math heavy courses when I have historically been terrible at math, and landing a position at a highly competitive administrative fellowship at Rochester Regional Health.

Despite all these positives, ultimately, the pandemic is something I would not want to go through again.