Artist Statement: Nothing is the same as it used to be. Whether I like it or not, everything has changed. All that I am used to doing is gone. Baseball; gone. School; gone. Hanging out with friends; gone. Effectively, every aspect of my life has changed in some way or another. Some people are sad. Some are happy. Some are mad. To be honest, I don’t know what I am yet. What I do know, though, is that my life has changed drastically over the course of these last few months, and I have no clue how I should be feeling about it.

The title for the photograph above is “Quarantine Crossfit”. It encapsulates a lot of what I have been going through these past weeks. Crossfit has become the one certainty in my life; an activity that gives me the normality that I have been searching for. This photo wasn’t just posed so that I can have a good one for this assignment; just come out to my cul de sac at 11 o’clock. You would find 6 people faithfully working out 5 days a week, together, all the time. And certainly having fun doing it. The reason I chose this photo wasn’t so I could shove my working out in people’s faces; I truly believe that this photo symbolizes my quarantine. My family and I, always together, not doing the thing we most want to do, but doing something we all love.

This quarantine, no doubt, will give me a whole host of stories to tell my kids when I grow up. The basketball with my dad, the Netflix shows, the Crossfit, the fights(mostly minimal). It surely isn’t over though. We still have a long time to wait until life gets back to normal. In fact, I don’t even remember what normal is anymore. All I can remember is family, my house, Crossfit, online school, and video games. And to be honest, it could be a lot worse. If “Quarantine Crossfit” is what symbolizes my time during this pandemic, I know I’m a lot better off than most. I have my family, the outdoors, and my house. That’s really all I need, and until the quarantine is lifted, I know I’ll be just fine.