By EA
In today’s world everyone is constantly on their phones or watching tv and spreading lies and misinformation and people just never seem to just stop what they are doing and get up and go for a little adventure. It doesn’t even have to be for long. You could go to a national park or a local park, or just take your dog for a walk without being plugged to our electronic devices. You can find joy and happiness with nature and wildlife just outside your doorstep.
There I am watching the Nightly News on NBC and ABC every night getting all the headlines from the day’s events. I watched a lot of Covid and mask policies coverage on the news mostly of course, but there was also new coverage about the upcoming Winter Olympics and the Superbowl playoff games. I watched the weather reports about the blizzards in the East coast and was kind of disappointed that we didn’t get a blizzard because I love snow and the cold, and it never really snows in Virginia anymore. It was also interesting seeing the south being hit with frigid temperatures and iguanas falling from trees because they become frozen and just fall. When the temperature warms up and they thaw out and are still alive. I find that very fascinating. After I watched the news, I switch to Disney+ to watch Encanto for the fourth time. I do all this while on my other electronic devices. I am sure it is not the healthiest way to life when being consumed by technology, social media, and the news. I then check my blackboard and email again to make sure I don’t miss any assignments or important announcements. As a socially anxious introverted person who spends my time isolated in my apartment avoiding social interaction because the pandemic has caused a decline in progress with my social anxiety, so it is like starting from scratch and it sucks.
Since it was very cold over the weekend I stayed on campus and didn’t want to slip on icy roads driving somewhere. I just decided to explored campus for an hour being unplugged in the winter environment and checked out GMU’s different gardens and greenhouses on campus and visited the pond across from the Performing Arts Center looking for geese or squirrels or any wildlife if they weren’t hibernating. It was nice getting outside and taking in the sights since I never had time to do it my first semester in the fall as a transfer student. Last semester, I volunteered 20 hours in the hydroponic greenhouse, innovative food forest and the roof top greenhouse for volunteer hours for my class last semester. I never thought of myself as a plant person until I started volunteering for the Sustainability office. It really helped with my stress and anxiety it was very calming, fun, relaxing, and I just kept going back every moment of it. I hope to start volunteering again this spring semester soon because I had so much fun volunteering at the different greenhouses and gardens. I love nature and animals and I want to start doing more exploring because I want to do wildlife conservation of some kind someday. My walk sure was cold but so worth it in the end.