The Coronavirus Took Away Everything From Me

Except for one thing: self-confidence

The Coronavirus Pandemic has affected several people in several ways. Some got affected directly and some indirectly.

The ones who got directly affected are the people who were attacked by the disease, and we all know that the coronavirus took away a number of valuable lives, fortunately, some were cured.

I’m one of the remaining population, the ones who got affected indirectly. Yes! this is a story of mine of how the coronavirus played an indirect role in my life.

I understand that writing an article on the COVID-19 is a bit of a cliché subject nowadays, but I felt like I just wanted to express the struggle I went through wearing a happy face to the outer world. The main reason I write this is that I know there are thousands of people who can relate to what I’m going to say.

As days continued, the coronavirus started to show me its dark side. The first thing that happened was:

1. I lost my well-paying job

Since childhood, becoming a Software Engineer was a forever dream to me, finally, in 2019 December I successfully completed my bachelor of science degree and the best part is I received an offer of employment as Technical Account Manager right after graduation. Being honest, I’d say this was purely on luck as I was only an average student. That feeling was nothing but overwhelming happiness.

I was under the impression that I made my parents eternally proud and happy, the sad part is, I was wrong back then. All that happiness and proud moments were temporary.

My Job was okay when I started in 2020 late February. Nothing was really hard, I was adapting myself to their culture. The first 15 days were very smooth and I felt I could take things over in the company very soon.

Then Corona happened!

All the employees of the company were asked to work from home, as the situation in my country was getting worse due to the virus. As I said earlier I did nothing but enjoyed myself during the early period of the lockdown.

Working from home was really a mess and a terrible nightmare for me. I never thought there’ll be a day in my life that I’ll be happy to say “I’m waiting to go back to the office”. I was getting constant pressure from my boss to work on new projects where I had only 15 days of experience in the industry.

Nobody in the company helped me when I actually needed some backup, instead, they backstabbed. I tried myself so hard not to give up but after so much of stress, humiliation, and lack of appreciation made me quit for the first time in life out of frustration. Then I realized the career path which I was traveling was a dead-end.

Thanks to Corona!

2. Getting out of shape without gym and sports

I have to admit that my passion for sports and gym is impeccable. Let that be whatever the occasion is, rain, thunderstorms, whatever, I pushed myself into the gym whenever I had to. I never made any excuses not to go to the gym and the sports I was doing on a regular basis.

Oh yeah! When I say about sports, boxing and football were my lovelies, we had nice chemistry between us. And occasionally I used to play badminton with some of my friends.

Eating healthy was always a part of my lifestyle, this habit started to follow me since the early days of my gym life. I always used to have a balanced diet to maintain my figure and health.

Then Corona happened!

I have no way of getting into the gym, no boxing, no football, I just had to stay at home like a plum pudding. Staying home for a long time got me too lazy.

Even the only good habit that I had for ages, eating healthy flew away. We have limited resources at home, I can’t be choosy, I just have to eat whatever available due to the lockdown.

Finally! I started working out at home after seeing some Instagram fitness models doing their workouts at home. That was indeed a bad idea. I used resistance bands to support my workouts, and while doing the rowing exercise the resistance band couldn’t handle the pressure, it decided to break and give me a nice and powerful shot on my back. Ouch! that hurt me a lot. This reminded me of how I used to get beaten form teachers in school.

Thanks to Corona!

3. Lost track of friends and a social life

Before the lockdown, I used to meet up with friends at least every weekend, maybe for a beer, a movie night, or I’d say we spend nights playing FIFA. This seemed to be a happy lifestyle for me, there was nothing to complain about. I worked during the weekdays and had a pretty decent social life with a small circle of friends.

This is how I was enjoying my life, it was the same pattern but indeed it was fun. Going to work 9–5 every day, going for boxing training after work and, parties, meetups with friends, and football on weekends.

Then Corona happened!

As I already mentioned that my social circle was small, it started to shrink even more. Currently, I’m only in contact with two or three friends of mine, that too very rarely we catch up on video calls through WhatsApp. The social distancing actually made a significant gap.

My movie room is so silent as I don’t have my friends coming over to spend the nights with me watching thrilling movies and playing FIFA all night long mocking each other. This feeling of loneliness is something really hard to explain with words.

Thanks to Corona!

I just felt like my lifestyle has been ruined in a split second. My world was relatively small and everything I had was taken away from me.

Thinking about the future made me frustrated and depressed but also the man who never wanted to give up.

Yet, I have one last powerful tool with me that corona could never take it away from me, this can only be ruined by me. That is:

Self-Confidence

As for my understanding self-confidence is something like sugar, having more of it can spoil the coffee, and having less of it will give you no proper taste. Just like that, an adequate amount of self-confidence will is like the perfect cup of coffee.

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within” — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

This confidence level I had in me never let me down during the battle I’m fighting against the pandemic. I had nothing to lose but only to gain.

I remembered I registered to the Medium Partner Program so I could write about what inspires me back then in early February 2020. I was new to the platform, wrote a few pieces, didn’t get much attention as you can see in the photo below. I had to stop focusing on my writing because I had no time with my new job.

As soon as I resigned my job, the opportunity for writing knocked on the door again, I got back into writing came up with 4 new articles and still the results were the same, It was very hard to gain attention, my writing skills were poor, and out of ideas.

The self-love, self-motivation, and especially the self-confidence are the factors that keep me moving forward no matter how bad I was failing in life.

The friends who help you during your bad times are the ones worth being a part of your life. I found new friends, through medium.com who are also writers. Amardeep Parmar, Oren Cohen, Leon Purton were the people who inspired me as a writer and helped me by going out of their way to improve myself as a better writer.

Miracles did happen, One of my articles “Lessons I Learned From My First Boxing Fight” got double curated under the topics Sports and Self the best part was I got an email from the medium editors saying my article was selected as a featured post that will appear in all over the medium users’ home page. I was out of the moon. You can read the article here if you wish to.

As a beginner, this is something so much special to me. The biggest learning outcome I had from this is that whatever happens in life, we should keep working until we get what we actually wanted.

Turning the negatives into positives and accepting the fact that time will heal everything are the best options we have when nothing goes right in our life. I never know what will happen in the following days but I’m pretty sure that I will never give up. As of for now I’m fighting the pandemic with all that I have left with me “Self-Confidence”.

I’m not a teacher or a certified coach to teach anyone how to live their lives, I’m just a common man who’s facing my fears just like all the superheroes out there who can relate their problems with mine.

Life will not always take you in the path you wanted, sometimes you’ll have to take the diversion. Believe me, my friend, you’ll end up in the correct place.

Thanks for reading my friends. I’d love to hear your thoughts and how are you dealing with this pandemic.