Hi folks, my name is Sade J., and I am a 13-year-old from New York. My dream job would be to make a living as a full-time musician. My hidden talent is fashion design and thrift flipping(taking thrifted clothes and making them my own.) I am passionate about all the arts, but music mainly. Something I miss being able to do is to go out to restaurants and stores with my friends. I am a part of my middle school’s GSA, as well as taking piano lessons and circus classes. Quarantine has been an interesting experience for me. As someone who already struggles with mental health issues, it has really just added another layer of suck to the whole thing. In the beginning, it seemed okay because we had to isolate ourselves (which I unfortunately to some extent already did). However, as time progressed I found myself in the habit of doing absolutely nothing and all the hard work I did to improve my mental health and wellbeing just kind of unraveled. There are upsides to it though. I’ve reached out to many more friends than I had done before. I didn’t realize how much I needed people until I couldn’t be around them at all. Quarantine has also given me lots of time to myself, which as an introvert is EXTREMELY important, so that’s good. For online learning, my school treated every day as a half-day which to start sounded like it would be good. We did periods 0-4 on one day, and then on the next day, we’d have the rest of the periods. For some reason, whether it be because of quarantine or not, even though it was half the day spent learning, it was twice as draining and I found myself longing for the end of the day more than I ever had before. During the quarantine, I have decided to do lots of work on myself in an attempt to braid back together everything that frayed within me. I’ve been meditating and working out a bunch. (I’m still waiting to get swole though. Don’t know when that’s gonna happen) What’s kept me at least a little bit sane was art and music. Finding something to really pour my time into has been necessary. I highly recommend embroidery if that’s something you’d be into because it is 1) extremely time-consuming 2) very relaxing and 3) you can binge a show while doing it. Writing and journaling have also been really helpful. Even when we weren’t quarantined, writing has always been my way of getting anything out that I didn’t want to talk about. It also gave me space to form my thoughts into words without having anyone rapid-fire questions back at me.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope it helped!