Every day since self-isolation began has started the same. The sun rises, the light begins to flood into my room and my tired eyes begin to open up. However, when I find myself face to face with my smiling dog, sometimes my demeanor does not match his. 

On three occasions, terror flooded my face as I looked from my dog to the clock and back to my dog again. I stared at the clock once more, half expecting to have read it wrong. However, deep down, I knew that I forgot to set my alarm. 

Twice when I forgot to set my alarm, I had woken up right before class started and only had to deal with the torture of having people see me in my pajamas. However, there has been one occasion where I just slept right through my entire art history class. 

I sat at my laptop for a long time trying to come up with an acceptable excuse as to why I was not present in class, but I could not think of a single reason. My first thought was to say I had an appointment, but since my dentist and doctor’s offices have been shut down for about a week, that idea was a bust. 

Finally, I just emailed my professor saying that I overslept. I know that it sounds lame, but what could I do? Say that my mom forgot to wake me up for class? I am in college, after all, even if it doesn’t feel like it. 

After all of my classes are done, I usually go for a run to get some exercise and a change of scenery. However, after two weeks of running past my town’s now-desolate and abandoned middle school, I feel as though I am stuck in the movie “Groundhog Day.” 

Each day seems to blend into the next, so much so that if a person came up and asked me what day of the week it was, I honestly could not tell them. Although most of my days seem to be a continuous loop, there is one day of the week that I look forward to. 

Sunday is a day like any other. However, there is one difference, and that difference is called Bagel Sunday. Bagel Sunday is my saving grace because that is the day I venture out of my neighborhood and go to the grocery store. 

If someone told me a month ago that I would find immense joy in going to the grocery store to pick out bagels for my family, I would have told them that they were insane. However, I have become such a frequent visitor on Sundays that the workers now even know my name. 

Although I do feel like I’m starring in a remake of “Groundhog Day,” I find joy in some things that I can do at home. Since the quarantine has started, I realized I’m not terrible at painting. Who knew the doodles in my notebooks would amount to something? 

When I’m not doing homework, painting or dozing off on my couch while watching “The Office,” I spend the rest of my time FaceTiming my friends, who are ironically only a 10-minute drive from my house. Even though I haven’t seen many of them for an entire semester, our conversations seem to blend into one another as nothing is happening in our lives. 

However dull my life is at the moment, I watch the news and realize how fortunate my family is to be healthy and happy. Although many things seem to be bleak at the moment, I always think back to a quote on a poster in my room, “This too shall pass. It might pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.”