2020 — A Loading Screen for the Future
By: Anirudh Is Online
Tags: Personal Blog, Lockdown, Effects Of Covid 19, Future, 2021

Hello, Internet,

This is Anirudh here.

So a year ago today I made a list of the things I wanted to do before 2020.

And how I was going to spend 2020.

Well, we all know how this year went up until now.

This year for me just felt like being in limbo.

Not too bad, not too good, just existing.

In that list was how I wanted to keep a journal, how I wanted to finish some online courses that I started and some other stuff.

I didn’t really feel like journaling since nothing was going on, So I just made like 4 entries this whole year. As for the courses, I finished them quite early into the lock-in March itself.

There was another thing that I wanted to do consistently, which was my youtube channel. Now to be honest I’ve been posting consistently weekly one video other than taking a break for the month of Jan, august, and September.

It was solely because I wasn’t really getting anywhere.

I would post a video and see like 3 or 4 people clicking on it and just leave.

Like the audience retention charts were bad.

So I knew I was doing something wrong.

But I didn’t want to give up yet, I optimized my old videos with new thumbnails and tags and I saw some results.

Other than that I’ve been pretty alright this year so far.

I stopped giving things meaning if it is irrelevant.

Things are weird this year or may have always been weird and I am just noticing it now being stuck at home.

From the beginning of the year, things just seem to get crazier and crazier, like this is kinda a superhero movie and the stakes keep getting bigger and bigger.

Like literally there is a cyclone outside and with a possibility of one more on the way.

Haha

A lot of people have a problem with staying at home and some people want to stay home. People are scared of getting ill when they go out and others want people to go out and be normal for the economy.

Okay, so who is right?

Well, it’s not that easy to decide.

The first reason for going into lockdown is to flatten the curve, to stop the spread basically.

Well we did that and the rate of spread was reduced for a while, then it raised and reduced.

People are still being affected here and there and some people just want to stay home, stay safe.

On the other hand, some people want things to go back to how it was before, Small shops, startups want customers and a lot of laborers and employees lost their jobs and don’t have anything else to do and on macroscale economics of countries are in jeopardy.

If you do a job remotely from home doesn’t mean everyone else can also do their jobs from their home.

So the financial structure is in danger when you consider income for governments comes in from public transportation and other services.

So we just can not stay in lockdown forever which some people would like to stay that way.

Now the problem is that on one hand, The lockdown stays and we will be safe but the economy of the country gets fragile with time or on the other hand lift restrictions and get the economy to where it was before and risk life in the process.

So as you can see if you have a preconceived judgment, you would have gone like yea this one is clearly better than the other.

But it is not that easy because if the lockdown stays and the economy fails, people will probably suffer from starvation among other things or the lockdown is lifted, the people will regain their financial stability, but risk getting affected.

So there should be balanced as all things should be.

The problem now is that, if the lockdown lifts, then there was no point in having lockdown in the first place.

To be clear I am not speaking on a personal level, just as a group of people.

By being in lockdown, It feels like we just postponed the inevitable.

So I hope now you see that it is not an easy decision to make.

I mean I am neither an economist nor a medical expert.

Just a normal observer or spectator of events that I have no control over.

If you would have asked me last year If things would be like this now, I would have laughed coz it’s just like a movie and probably over thought what I would really do if things happened like this.

A lot of people think that 2021 will be better and that things will go back to normal. But I clearly don’t see that happening.

Schools and colleges aren’t open and are just being conducted online. I am supposed to have class now, but well it is canceled, because of a cyclone.

I see things going back to normal when there is a cure and it’s given to everyone and not just some people. Experts say that it would be harder to distribute the cure than to make it.

It makes sense because everyone has to get one and in a place like India (where I live) the population is a lot. It will be hard to distribute the cure.

Each and every one of those people should be cured.

So you see how I think 2021 isn’t probably going to be normal right?

Not gonna lie, there are already a lot of projects going on to solve this, but it would take around a decade to make it available publicly from what I have read online. Do your own research before believing something online.

So it takes time to make, then test and then another test and test on people and then on some more, and so on.

So it will take some time, could one. two or even five years

But things will get to normal, I hope.

For people saying that this is the new normal, do you really expect that people from now on going to stay six feet apart, wear masks always and always be conscious of what they eat, where they eat, where they travel to like I can go on and on? You get the idea.

I think this is turning into a rant, 1101 words in, This has to come to an end.

I conclude this article by saying that, I think this is not a new normal, I still believe that things will go back to normal or even better than before, because people now know how going out exploring is nice.

I feel like this has been like waiting on a game loading screen like we are going from one level to another and this is just like the loading screen.

I hope the next level is better and the game doesn’t just crash on the loading screen.

If you liked reading then follow me @anirudhisonline.

Follow me on Instagram and let me know what other topics you would like to see me talk about.

Thank you for your time.

I will see you at the next one.

BYE.