Summer 2020
Cover photo taken July 3, 2020, an hour south of Sacramento
What’s up gang. It’s another update post. This time I’m gonna tell you all about my summer. “But Matthew, I really don’t care.” Too bad, I already wrote it, you’re too late. Summer 2020, the last one…let’s go.
Like many of my friends, my internship was canceled due to something called Covid-19 and for the majority of summer, I was locked up at home with my parents and younger sister. Being immune-compromised, I spent the first two months switching between my room, the family room, and the bathroom. It was a blast. With the coming of June, things started to relax a bit, and sometimes I took a walk outside.
It goes without saying that I was extremely lucky to be in the position I was with COVID. My family was well off enough I didn’t have to worry about making it to next month’s rent or meal, my parents were able to work from home, and I had family and friends in similar situations that I was able to see on a semi-regular basis. This is a privilege that I do not take lightly as I see my fellow Americans needing to take to the streets just for the opportunity to have what I have. COVID has brought to the limelight the injustice and hypocrisy of our system that minority groups in our nation have been experiencing since its inception, and it will be up to our generation to change this. I won’t go into that now, but I will in the future.
I spent most of my quarantine either listening to music or reading. I tried to get addicted to video games, but I couldn’t find one that wasted the hours without me getting bored after the first one. (Though as soon as Skyrim 6 comes out, I will be re-entering quarantine until the game has been bested several times.) A quick favorite book list, the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown, The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig, and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. A Gentleman in Moscow in particular was one of the best books I have read in a while, and I have since gone and read everything else Amor Towles has written. That’s enough of me pretending I’m an intellectual though, let’s move on.
I traveled a bit, (safely). Earlier in the summer, I made the trip to Spokane with one of my good friends to grab my truck and drive her back down to the Bay Area. I had left her at the airport with the assumption that I would return in a week to pick her back up after spring break, but obviously, the plan changed. The problem was that the truck was sitting in an 8 dollar a day parking lot, and many days had transpired since I had been up there. Luckily the airport powers that be were nice to me and only made me pay a portion, saving me several hundred dollars. Later that summer, some of my favorite people and I traveled down to San Diego to celebrate one of my best friend’s birthdays. We quarantined for several weeks beforehand and after and spent the entire weekend in said friend’s apartment, so even I felt safe the entire time. I was happy to see the man; it had been too long.
I was productive this summer, just not in the way I planned it to be. As I said, my internship was canceled, so I had a lot of free time on my hands. A portion of that time was working on some resume-building skills so I can get this thing called a job when I graduate, which I am told is an important thing to have as they give you money. At the time of writing, I am about a week away from finishing the Google IT program and Quantitative Analyst program on Coursera. As someone majoring in political science (or as a friend once said, “unemployment”) I figured adding some extra lines to my resume was something I should probably do.
The other way I was productive was by doing this, writing. Yes, I can (kind of) call myself a professional writer. That is in the sense that I did freelance writing for several months during the summer. It didn’t pay much, but it kept me busy and I was able to convince myself I had been productive at the end of the day. In the addition to freelance, I also began posting a lot more on my site, with essays on topics that were interesting to me and short stories inspired by the traveling I have lucky been enough to do throughout my short life. Check them out and let me know what you think. (Unless you don’t like them, in which case you can kindly keep your opinion to yourself.)
The last thing I want to talk about is a passion project that I have been working on since the end of 2019-before COVID. I am proud and apprehensive to announce that I have been writing a book, a book that is 2/3 of the way there and I will be publishing it at the beginning of 2021. Self-publishing that is, on Amazon since they make it so easy and cheap. If I can be serious for a quick minute here, I have never had a project that has consumed me like this in all my 22 years, and while I’m sure I will be horrified of it two months after publishing, I am proud of the work I have done. More info will come out as I get closer to finishing.
That’s about it for now. Definitely a little different than last summer. Tomorrow I start my last year of college and school for the time being at least. Here’s to ending on a high note.