Pandemic – The Conscious Hour

Ending to My Club Experience: Lessons Learned

I’ve been keeping a venting channel for the many extracurricular that I’m doing as a highschool Junior. I’m doing an average of 6 hours of club meetings and I have to host the great majority of them, so that adds to the pressure immensely.

For one of my biggest club, we’ve decided to take a break. Scrolling through my venting journal, it took me back to all the moments of pain and joy that carried me through this journey.

My proudest achievement is being about to let go the fear of other people’s opinions of me and focus on what really mattered. Taking that step back allowed me the much needed space to breathe. Another one is persistence because preparing for two meetings to host every week isn’t easy, and I worked very hard on it. All those difficult evenings of stressing out before the meeting gave me an insight into how I handle myself in high stress situations. Those moments were the lowest, yet, most memorable moments of my week.

From the lows there are also highs, where I was able to see the impact that I’m having on my club members, building a community in which people care about. It’s the magic of bonding with people that I drove me through the repeating trials of suffering, working, and achieving, all happening in the span of a single 6-9 pm. It got me to know how it feels to really work hard for something, even if you don’t really achieve anything the end.

How suffocating it feels when all the doors are closed and how liberating the light feels when a window suddenly opens.

In the end, what mattered the most is building my resilient mindset, and the real warmth that I experienced when the group worked together, when I felt that people have got my back, and I belonged in this community.

A Choice to Savor Consciously

We go about most of our days as empty-headed zombies. For me, being locked inside my room because of quarantine robs me of my passion and motivation. However, an interesting phenomenon I found was that it was easier for me to do creative work during the hour of the sunset. I think this is because of the immense passion I felt during one sunset walk; buried in messy thoughts from school, the beauty of nature captivated me and released me from my mental spiraling.

Since that experience, I consistently go for a sunset walk, during which the warm lights enable the cultivation of many great ideas for my writing pieces. I also started a personal blog named Conscious Hour to record some of the ideas and compile them into my personal philosophy. I chose to savor the moment consciously because I believe that in a day of our busy, disorientating lives, finding a time of spiritual connection allows our creative mindset and passion to flow through the blockade of negative thoughts and emotions. Doing so, we can better ground ourselves through reflection and deep breaths, before moving forward.

Staying Motivated to Work Out

The first five second on the treadmill feels unbearable. The muscles in my leg screaming for me to stop the sudden strain after resting and sitting around on a typical quarantine day.

It has been fourteen months into the pandemic and numerous failed attempts to get myself on to the treadmill. After throwing my workout plans out of the window for the last time, I finally found a way that worked wonderfully and like nothing before!

Today is day two into my workout routine: that is running 20 minutes on the treadmill, a small challenge but never to be underestimated. I discovered that listening to the songs by Ev e, a Japanese singer that I found on Youtube, energizes me so much that I’m actually having fun during the usually devastating 20 minutes. It’s the exhilarating competition between the fast beats of the music and my pace of running that puts me on the thrill to not slow down. I’m currently working to finish a two hour playlist, which will be 6 sessions. And at the end of it, I’ll be able to look back and check off this accomplishment.