Dear Diary

In the form of diary/ journal entries, write about someone who's up late at night because they're having trouble sleeping.

 4/8/2020

Dear Diary,

I wish I was asleep right now, but I can’t get my mind to stop running. There is so much to be worried about right now in the world, and I feel that I just can’t handle it. We are in quarantine right now due to a crazy virus, so I’ve been having to do school at home. It’s hard. This was supposed to be my last year of high school and I was supposed to have fun with my friends and enjoy life. We were supposed to go to Branson, Missouri for the National Jazz Band competition, but that has been cancelled. I can’t even be with my jazz band friends because we can’t leave the house. I miss them. I get why we need to be in our house and not around a bunch of people because this virus is bad, but I’m having a hard time adjusting to the fact that my senior year is not going to be like I had planned. We don’t even know if we will have a graduation ceremony.

I guess that is one plus of this whole situation. I was supposed to be one of the speakers at graduation, but now I don’t have to be. I was kind of nervous about it, but still, it would have been something to brag about to my friends once I got to college. Speaking of college, who knows what will happen there. Maybe they will just decide that everything is online after this, and we will just live in our houses and have no human contact except with our immediate family. I don’t know if I could handle living with my parents forever. I was looking forward to living in the dorms and having freedom. Now who knows what will happen.

I know I should just probably find a relaxation app and try to fall asleep, but I think it might also be helpful to just get my thoughts out of my head an onto paper. What did people do before apps that helped them fall asleep? Maybe I should google that later. My mom would probably just tell me that back in her day you counted sheep or something like that. Why would you count sheep, why wouldn’t you count cats or lemurs? Okay lemurs would be kind of random, but sheep don’t really strike me as animals that would help you sleep. They are kind of noisy.

I wonder if I should learn how to be more self-sufficient and learn how to live off of the land. I guess if the world is going to end, I should probably be more than just some kid that likes to play the piano and read. I don’t think either of those would really help me survive the zombie apocalypse. What if this virus really does turn us all into a bunch of zombies? Are zombies real? Could this virus morph into something that could turn us into zombies? I should probably not think about zombies. That is not going to help me sleep.

I really do wish I could sleep. I guess I really don’t have anything really pressing that I have to do in the morning, so I guess it is not a really big deal, but what if sleep deprivation makes you more susceptible to this virus, and I get it, then I turn into a zombie. Eating brains would be weird. I really need to stop thinking/writing about zombies.

I have an English paper that I need to finish writing tomorrow. Maybe I should get up and work on that. Writing about the plot devices of Wuthering Heights and how they relate to the world today is sure to make me sleepy and maybe it will help me get my mind off of zombies. So maybe I should go do that. But do I really want to do homework? Maybe I could just read or keep writing?

I think I will keep writing. My mom showed me a post on Facebook that we should write in a journal and record our feelings during this time because we are making history. I really don’t want to make history. I just want to enjoy my last year of freedom before I go off to be an adult. However, it is kind of crazy that a disease could grind the entire world to a standstill. My dad is always looking at his phone and grumbling about the status of his 401K. I don’t really understand what he is talking about, but I know it has something to with money.

Since both of my parents are working from home and my siblings and I have school, it seems like someone is always using the computers for work, so I’m not able to play Minecraft. I guess in the overall scheme of things that is really not a big deal, but I do miss just being able to sit at the computer, smash blocks, and listen to audiobooks. The libraries are even closed. I guess that is another reason to be grateful for technology. We can still borrow digital books, so I don’t have to worry about not being able to read, but it does kind of stink to have to read to my baby sister from my phone instead of a book. Yeah, we have books here, but she doesn’t want to listen to us read those, so to find variety, I have to look for picture books that are compatible with my phone.

I’m not really super worried about this whole virus thing, but I do miss my grandparents. We haven’t been about to see them for a month because they are at an increased risk of having complications from this virus, so mom and dad say that we can’t visit either set of them, even though they are only 15 minutes away.

I think I am finally starting to feel a little bit more tired, so I think I am going to try to fall asleep. Thank you for listening to me. Hopefully getting all of this out will help me be able to sleep. One can only hope.