It’s been a very unsettled period of time with a pandemic caused by the coronavirus. In the past few months, many people have died of coronaviruses. Some of you reading blog must have lost your close family or friends. It has been a truly sad series of events. I sincerely hope that the people who passed away are in heaven, free from pain and are resting in peace.
While those of us who are left behind still have a lot of unsettled moments ahead on earth, we want to keep our positivity as much as possible and hope for a return to stability as soon as possible.
I’m an event photographer, so my industry was one the first to lose work, and by the end of March, all of my work for 2020 had been cancelled. But before starting to get worried about loss of job, my mind got saturated with the fact that more and more people were getting infected and dying, and things deteriorated rapidly at the end of March and into April, while we didn’t even have enough time to accept the reality of the situation, and time passed in a stupor.
There was not much we could do because of the lockdown, so from mid-March to May I did most of my shopping by delivery and holed myself up in my apartment except for the occasional walk as an effort to stay healthy. I didn’t see many people walking down the street in April and May, even in New York City, because the infections kept increasing. Sometimes when I walked outside, I felt a different atmosphere. You could feel the frustration and tension of the people, even if they didn’t say anything. There were ambulance sirens blaring almost every hour. The Empire State Building was flashing red every night as if to tell us that New York City was in an emergency.
In the midst of all this, we had to do what we could at the moment anyway, so I began to rebuild my website. In fact, I had hired a contractor to redesign my website before the pandemic started, but then this situation started and I lost contact with that person. (I hope he’s doing well…)
So I decided to learn the WordPress.org program and build it myself. I created this site and another one of my own, though it’s not up yet.
I’ve translated the entire site into Japanese and added a Japanese version. Now I can write my blog in Japanese as well. No matter how many years I’ve been in the US, I’m still Japanese, so it’s easier for me to write in Japanese.
From the middle of June to the beginning of July, the situation has finally started to ease up a bit. However, the city still hasn’t returned to what it used to be. The number of shooters in New York City has skyrocketed, security has worsened, and even the Midtown area is deserted, with half the shops closed. It’s hard to believe that a city that was so busy just a few months ago can now be like this…..
I’m sure those of you who read this blog, living in Japan and elsewhere, are still worried about the situation every day. I sincerely pray that you and the people around you will stay healthy and return to a peaceful life as soon as possible.
