Our world has looked a little different recently. The roads are empty. Nonessential businesses are closed. Unemployment rates soar. Instead of being on my college campus finishing up my senior year in lecture halls and in classrooms, I am sitting at my desk at home staring at my screen for hours at a time.
February 29th: Someone in Seattle dies of COVID-19. That same day, I get sick with a really bad cough. I smartly stay home.
By Tuesday, I’m in a self-imposed quarantine. On Wednesday, I cut my finger and realize I don’t have any bandaids left. Like most people, I don’t regularly call my neighbors. I can’t go knocking on their doors and risk exposing them to whatever I did or didn’t have.
I looked on the Hey Mayo App, but unfortunately, my neighbors don’t know about it just yet. I didn’t even know about it until three weeks ago, right before my quarantine.
I would have asked somebody to drop a single bandaid under my door. Instead, I used toilet paper to cover my wound. I just needed a #littlehelp.
Everyone’s heard people say something along the lines of, “social media is one of the root causes of anxiety in younger generations,” but there’s no common saying about why. Why? I think it’s because the topic of social media and anxiety has become so widespread that it’s supposed to be obvious. OK, this blog isn’t about all of the reasons why social media can cause anxiety, it’s about how my anxiety with social media brought me to find an app called Hey Mayo.
I try to take a few moments in my day to look around and examine my surroundings. Currently as I sit in a loud, busy coffee shop I see students sit at tables by themselves, nervously flipping through their textbooks, frantically typing out their study guides, a group of friends standing around waiting for their orders, laughing and catching up — probably as a pit stop before their next class, and at the table next to me — two people chatting and getting to know each other over cappuccinos, probably on a first date.
As I sit here as an outsider to these people’s lives, I can’t help but think that everyone here has complex lives of their own. Each one of these individuals has a family, friends, a favorite hobby, something they’re passionate about, something they would like to achieve; and all I see is a brief few minutes of their day. I usually like to think of my life as a TV show with me as the star, but somehow sitting here observing others, I see that there is much more.
March 4th and March fourth are homophones or, words or expressions that sound the same but hold different meanings. Today’s March Fourth and Do Something Day encourages people to make a positive impact – small or large on themselves or on others in their community. Celebrating this event can take on different ways - like taking your friends out to dinner to a restaurant that’s been on their checklist or even lending your phone charger to someone who is sitting near you at the library! But the opportunity to help doesn’t always come around if you just sit and wait for it …
