I have to put my feelings into writing.
Tomorrow will be my 80th day of quarantine. I still go out occasionally, to the supermarket, to my studio (at the apartment) a few times, to the printing shop, to the plant nursery, but the majority of my out of home activities have been cut off since March 13th.
How do I feel about this situation? At first I was confused and had a lot of anxiety. I read too much news about the pandemic and some of my live drawing and workshop jobs were cancelled last minute. I didn't know what to do. I have three people in my team, one works from home, two works at the studio a few days in a week. With heavy consideration, I have to adjust everything, including the salary. It's not an easy decision for me, like I myself still learn on how to manage a team, let alone facing this pandemic while also trying to manage a business, during crisis as how media says it. Usually I have my schedules filled for the next 3 months. Now, I still have some job requests but the number is totally decreasing.
I took quite some time to think, to make myself feel better, to make sure my family is safe, to plan how I should adjust my business during this critical times. On the first few weeks since we started the quarantine, I had no problem of staying at home, because I love staying at home since forever. But I kinda miss the outside world, like looking at buildings from afar when I drive, the sunset sky in the afternoon, the less busy streets at night, all those beauty that I've taken for granted. So I drove around the city, I stayed in the car, I was just roaming around looking for nothing. Just wanted to feel 'alive'. I came back home feeling really sad. I saw so many empty taxi queueing and waiting for passengers that will never come, empty and eery streets made me feel so anxious. I on the other hand felt grateful, because even though I have so many jobs that were cancelled, but I can stay at home and feel safe. While other people really depends on normal city activities and this pandemic really hit them hard.
I spent the first few weeks distracting myself from the news. I normally cook at home, but this quarantine has taken me to the next level, I cooked a lot of time consuming meals like rendang, opor and boba. I baked so many cakes and sent most of them to my mom because I just love baking but I'm not really a fan of eating the cakes. I asked my team to work from home, I felt like terrible because I didn't share task lists to my team as much as how I normally would. I tried to forgive myself for not feeling like the best version of me, not as productive, not as communicative as how I usually would, but I have to accept it because that's the only way we can take during that time.
As we entered the second month of quarantine, I started to get the hang of it. Still not as productive, that's ok, but I tried to see my days as an extra time, a long pause to catch up with myself. I reminded myself that I asked for this. In the beginning of 2020, I told myself that I wanted a long pause from work. I questioned myself if I still love what I'm doing or whether I should stop doing live drawing because honestly had enough of live drawing. It's fun and all, but also is very very very tiring. And in just two months since I wrote about it in my 2020 journal, my wishes came true. My live drawings were cancelled, my events were cleared out of my schedules, and I finally have this long break that I'm been longing for.
To say that I'm sad and felt terrible about this pandemic, yes I am, but the majority of myself felt so grateful and I couldn't stop thinking how Allah answered my prayers and my doubts in the weirdest way possible.
Last year I also talked with Diana on how I wanted to be more focused in Studio, like managing my shop, on being entrepreneur. Diana said that 2020 should be my studio's year, which I agreed and took it seriously. Again, things happened in the weirdest way possible, during this pandemic, I basically have more time for Studio and I released a lettering kit that I have planned since last October. God knows why it took such forever for me to start selling it. It became a hit, omg, I have never delivered so many packages in a day like last week! My team helped me producing the products and making content for the social media, while I'm the one checking and packing each orders. It's tiring but I feel so happy!
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