I stopped writing on my blog during the COVID-19 pandemic and had been posting recipes for my past few entries. Initially, I created a blog to showcase creative projects, art or music finds, technology research essays, and now it serves as an online journal. I need an outlet to reflect on learnings, connections, and parallels to nature, wildlife, and human made ecosystems.

This is built in an effort to connect with my family, friends, and future people who live far from me. The pandemic had successfully pushed me into social behaviors I never expected I would be engaging in. When I became a web developer, I found it challenging to switch from the mindset of completing finished products in graphic design work to an infinite programming process divvied by 2 week sprints. Being a web developer is an endless learning process and it can sometimes lack satisfaction, often dampening one’s confidence in their profession skillset. This is if you have the wrong attitude. This was always on my mind pre-pandemic, but changes to human behavior was not always a real challenge for me until now. I’m sure that it was challenging many times in the past, but this is a new shift to the way we live. Humans are complex as individuals and as a society. I remember when I binge watched Black Mirror or Mr. Robot and would laugh at the fantasy that I might fall into one or more of these dark stories someday.

I am in one of these episodes now, and I’ve changed. I started to take care of my mental health in the start of 2020 and three months later, my company ran a test run for a “work-from-home” scenario just in case we would need it. That was actually my first day at my current job where I worked from home and I’m still working from home almost two years later. We know more about the pandemic, we have vaccines and treatments. We know there is a possibility this will taper off or introduce new variants. We know that there is always a chance for a bigger unknown, too. I’ve cried once almost every month, but it is ok to feel sad or homesick. The news, politics, climate change, war, inequities, big tech and all the things running my digital feed do affect me. This includes the relentless bombarding of ads, bots, identity theft anxiety and algorithms that all work together to make me feel small again. It’s important to remember to take a media diet. It’s also important to pat yourself on the back because it’s only human to feel stressed. It’s just as important to remember that there is still good in this world.

In the Spring of 2021, I became an Openlands TreeKeeper with hopes to sustain and support my personal growth.