Working In a Pandemic

In March 2020, I received a call from my managers at Barnes & Noble, informing me that I was officially put on furlough. What we thought was simply a scare became a reality as the bookstore was forced to close for the good of public safety.

Just like that, I was quarantined for the next four months. Until one day in July, I received a phone call from B&N asking me to come back to work. The store had reopened in June after Gov. Gavin Newsom gave bookstores and other retail businesses the green light to open for in-store browsing.

Despite the risk of exposure, I was looking forward to returning. I was slowly losing my mind at home. Though I was a writer, I couldn’t focus and failed to write a single word. I read many books and began to look forward to falling asleep as soon as the sun would set. Though I was fortunate enough for the unemployment benefits to keep me afloat, they were depleting, and I would soon need a job again. Most of all, I missed my coworkers; the past few months had been unbearably lonely. Even if it was dangerous to go out, I was relieved to receive that phone call. …

After ten years of writing, I have decided to let go

In mid-2010, I started my first novel. I was fresh out of high school and had decided to pursue a writing career. I worked on this novel for the past ten years, struggling during my undergrad years, understanding more about the writing craft at my MFA program, and later working on it on my own at my local library and cafés. I have told many friends about this book, used it for my MFA thesis, and devoted myself to this story for an entire decade. I have solved all the plot points. I have fleshed out each character. I have translated a world that lived in my head onto the page. …

I have kept a will saved within the files of my laptop for the past two years. I had never told anyone about this, but I have been suicidal for the past 7 years, and I wanted to have something ready if I would ever have to go.

I was surprised it took me months to finish writing my will; I didn’t know there was so much I wanted to say. I thought I wanted to disappear as quickly as possible. But the document grew to encompass pages of instructions and final words for everyone I knew and cared for. …

One of the clearest memories in my mind is the day my best friend failed to come back. We were attending a political rally and we met up with a few of their friends from an activist group they had recently joined. I told my friend I was going to the bathroom and they said they’d wait for me. When I came back, I saw them talking with their friends across the street. I didn’t want to come up to them and interrupt. So I waited where I told my friend I would. But then my best friend began walking away with their group. I stood there staring as the distance between us grew. I called to ask why they were walking away. They didn’t answer. I sent them a text asking the same thing. But I didn’t receive a response until about an hour later. …

I began writing in 2009 during my senior year of high school. I didn’t think of myself as a serious writer. I was just a teenager with too many romantic thoughts that came out as bad poetry. But before graduating, I began to take the craft more seriously and chose to take writing up as a career.

That said, my first years were incredibly difficult. I started my first novel after high school and have been working on it since. I struggled with it for so long during my undergraduate years. Even though I majored in English and read constantly, I only managed to reach the second chapter of my book. …

I was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 19. Since then, I have been taking various medications until only recently finding a combination of mood stabilizers that have kept my emotions, for the most part, in check. I have also attended a copious amount of therapy where I revealed my story to professionals in the hopes of “getting better.” It has taken me years of undergoing such treatments to understand that mental illness does not get better. I have not felt happiness in over 10 years. …

I went to an event a few weeks ago where a large group of alumni from various schools gathered to celebrate one another’s success in the film industry. I had never felt a stronger sense of impostor syndrome in my life.

To be fair, I do not have a background in film, nor was I an alumnus from any of those schools (USC, UCLA, etc.). I attended as a guest. I thought it’d be a wonderful opportunity to meet new people. And there were definitely people. There were actors who were working in indie films. There were producers who have given panels. …

Gentrification is the contemporary form of colonialism. It drives the impoverished out of their homes through skyrocketing housing prices. It is a new form of racism, another legacy of capitalism’s Social-Darwinian philosophy.

My hometown of Watsonville has been feeling its effects. The increasing number of cops downtown is new to me. I had lived here my entire life without seeing so many police officers patrolling the area. This may, however, be something that had been lost on me for a very long time. I had also failed to notice our county’s segregation. It was clear as night and day. One can walk the streets in either city and feel the difference in atmosphere. …