How It Started vs How It’s Going

WORDS BY Xenia Sanut @xeniasanut

ART BY Emma Lucas @emlucasart

My 2021 bucket list: How It Started • Save up for Japan exchange. • Travel more. • Exercise for 30 minutes daily. • Go out more. • Take more off-screen breaks. • Forget that 2020 ever happened.

I was at my boyfriend’s house on New Year’s Eve. We were sitting in the living room, watching the Sydney fireworks show, and admiring how the explosions of light were reflected on the dark waters of Sydney Harbour. Like many people, I was optimistic about 2021. We were out of lockdown for the majority of the summer, and after a week of the circuit breaker lockdown we were able to stop COVID-19 in its tracks. While my first semester was a hybrid of online and on-campus classes, 2021 still looked like the year where we would do all the things we took for granted before 2020. Until 2021 said, “Ha! Sike”. Both of the trips I had planned for this year, one to Inverloch with high school friends in February and the other to Sydney with two of my travel buddies in July, got cancelled due to lockdowns and outbreaks. I had planned to go to Japan for a semester exchange long before the world knew what ‘COVID-19’ meant My 2021 bucket list: How It’s Going and I got tired of hearing how everything was • Save up for Japan exchange. ‘unprecedented.’ I had Tokyo University in Save up for a Japan trip — sight, but that dream got further away from after this is all over. me with every cancellation and postponement. • Travel more. And then there was the classic “I’m going to • Travel to Sydney. exercise more” New Year’s resolution. I don’t CANCELLED think I needed the pandemic to happen to (Sydney outbreak) know where that was going. • Travel to Inverloch. A new New Year’s resolution, CANCELLED however, was going out and catching up with (Circuit Breaker lockdown) friends more. I have always been more of an • Travel somewhere introverted person, preferring the safety of my (literally, anywhere) bedroom to having to stand shoulder-to-shoulbefore the year ends. der with strangers on a packed train or, dare • Exercise for 30 minutes daily. I say, talking to hospitality staff when I want • Do yoga and a dance workout to order a meal. And while I am still an introevery day. verted person after the events of 2020, I knew • Do a dance workout every I had a lot of social recharging to do. At the weekend. start of first semester, I finally got my red Ps • Do Zumba whenever you and drove down the Mornington Peninsula can be bothered. with my boyfriend, almost crashing twice but • Go out more. feeling freer than any moment in the past year. • Go roller-skating I went roller-skating and did karaoke with old with friends. friends, and left that skating rink and karaoke • Do karaoke. booth having lost my balance and voice — • Get my hair dyed a but having found myself again. bright colour. So where am I now that we’re • LOCKDOWN BACK-UP in lockdown again? Well, I’m taking those PLAN: Catch up on online resolutions that I’ve only half completed and games and video calls. grasping at them like a life raft in the middle • Take more off-screen breaks. of a storm. I’ve gotten my first vaccine and am Do what you can to keep waiting out for my second because it feels like yourself busy and distracted. it’s all that I can do to help make this storm go • Watch more movies. away. Ultimately, I’m trying to stay optimistic • Read more Japanese manga. because that’s what resolutions are: the belief • Get vaccinated. that your problems will be resolved and that • Get second dose. (Oct 27) life has the capability to become better. ‡ • Forget that 2020 ever happened! Stay positive! We’ll get out of this soon!