If you haven’t yet found the motivation to make productive use of your time during quarantine, here’s a story that will inspire you not to give up hope: this woman who’s accomplished nothing all quarantine figures she’ll knock the next global pandemic out of the park.
Great outlook! You’ll get ‘em next time!
Although 29-year-old Rachel Vivano has spent the entirety of the COVID-19 pandemic sitting around binge-watching shows she’s already seen and scrolling on her phone, she’s not letting it get her down. Instead, she’s opted to take it easy for the time being, feeling reasonably confident that next time all of human civilization is brought to its knees by an unrelenting contagion of biblical scale, she’ll be mentally prepared to go all-in on enriching activities like learning to bake bread, getting into gardening, and completely reorganizing her apartment.
“Look, I’ll admit that I definitely haven’t made the best use of my quarantine time, but I figure this can sort of just be a practice pandemic. Next time there’s a great global plague that brings death to hundreds of thousands of people—like, maybe some sort of lab-engineered circulatory virus that makes blood shoot out of people’s eyes—I’ll be 100 percent ready to go full-on carpe diem and do cool things like learn to play the guitar,” explained Rachel. “Sure, I only rolled my yoga mat once to do a workout video this time around, but the next time an unruly wave of pestilence and unprecedented suffering overtakes the entire planet, I’m going to start going on long, refreshing runs first thing in the morning followed by a super nutritious breakfasts to give me the energy I need to start learning French!”
Hell yes!
“Seriously, as soon as I get wind of a viral hemorrhagic fever that, say, completely melts people’s organs within 48 hours and causes them to suffocate on their own liquefied lung tissue, I’m going to start a book club for classic novels I always meant to read but never did, and I’m going to make sure to include all the friends who I’ve totally fallen out of touch with, too!” she continued after noting that she’d only managed to do a couple Zoom happy hours with her friends during this pandemic before they fell out of the habit.
“And even if the next pandemic is caused by some crazy environmental thing that makes all of the air on earth toxic and it’s no longer safe to leave your house without a military-grade gas mask, I swear I’m going to find a way to grocery shop so I can cook a different dish every night, no matter how challenging or time-intensive it is,” added Rachel. “It’s about time I finally learned how to cook! I’ve been living off of boxed mac and cheese and takeout for basically this whole pandemic.”
Although Rachel could easily order some crochet needles or download Duolingo now to make the most of this current pandemic—which experts predict will last another year, at minimum—she instead prefers to focus on her plan for the next time a super disease results in widespread suffering and death, citing that it’s essential she spend this pandemic resting so she has the energy to really grab the next one by the horns.
Whether the next infection that forever alters life as we know it happens in two years or 10, it looks like Rachel is definitely going to crush it and use that time to become the person she always wanted to be! You got this, girl!
