A year that felt like a decade

Today marks my official quarantine anniversary. On March 11th, 2020 an hour after I finished teaching my CSULA pilates class, I had just walked home and pulled out the midterms to grade when I got the email. We were officially closed for face to face instruction and were to move everything online asap. The following day was filled with zoom meetings with our department as well as with the various movement studios I taught at as we quickly tried to assess how to serve our students safely, effectively, and with care. It was a marathon of technology, conversations, and experimentation. Inequities came up immediately. Who had access to internet, who had a computer, who had space to move in, who had family members to take care of, who had alone time to focus on themselves, who had work, who didn’t have work, who had support, who had food, who had visas, who could stay in the country, who needed to leave asap with no idea if they would be able to continue their education…none of us knew what was about to unfold.

The grocery stores were out of paper products and cleaners as a community of people tried to comprehend what a pandemic meant. I picked up extra coffee, peanut butter, beans, rice, and a really large bottle of mescal. We cozied up and rearranged the house to facilitate our art productions at home. My home office became a film studio outfitted with full sound, wireless mic, multi-angle lighting, and cameras. I reworked my curriculum for smaller spaces with a heightened focus on self expression to help students self monitor and keep themselves safe and healthy. My partner shifted into past projects and reworking material that had gotten pushed aside. Out of concern for people’s mental health, I also took to instagram with daily workouts to keep people connected and moving. 22 days straight of dance, pilates, and HIIT.

Three weeks in, things started setting into a routine, an intense routine but none the less something that felt in control. I was finding new ways to produce my monthly haflas and was getting use to clearing things off the calendar as events slowly began cancelling further and further out. And then things started getting crazy. Gun sales skyrocketed as people prepared for potential mob rule. Cars drove through the neighborhood lighting things on fire and tossing small explosives out the window, and nightly we could hear gun shots in the distance. A month later on May 25th, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police, and the wave of anger and injustice that had been mounting from our pandemic and generations of racism came crashing down. The streets were filled with our communities coming together in solidarity, in strength, in power. Curfews got earlier and earlier. Text announcements going out from public officials sometimes 10-15 minutes beforehand. Life felt so uncertain, both full of possibilities for great, much needed change as well as incredible fragility. Work was drying up fast. Spaces closing down. Classes cancelled. No events. No recordings. We hustled as the artists we are, but we were watching the life we knew evaporate in the summer heat.

As my semester finished and several studios closed, I started focusing on developing my Patreon school as a way to serve my students. Having this flexibility allowed me to offer a wide range of classes including lectures on music, history, culture, choreography, and more. My Patreon now has a library of several hundreds of classes on a variety of styles, techniques, and workouts. And after a few months I found my groove offering weekly live classes, private training, and a diverse curriculum. My students have grown and flourished, and it’s become a grounding force as well as constant inspiration. The power of community.

With all the creativity we started this quarantine, July brought some harsh lessons. So my little family of two cats, an enthusiastic puppy, and my partner and I packed up and left the city we had called home for over twenty years and found solace in the tranquil woods of western Washington with my parents. Disconnecting symbolically and literally was cathartic, heart breaking, and healing. Toes in the mossy forest floor, breathing in the fresh pine air, and playing cards laughing into the night. It was a much needed break and amazing gift to have that time with my family. I commuted into Tacoma to teach my Patreon classes (cuz very little internet in the woods) and continued my deep dive of reading, learning, and committing to social justice. It felt poetic to spend the election season in Western Washington, one of the most beautiful places on the planet, where I would drive by a confederate flag daily and was very aware of my “other”ness while in town. I grew up in this area as one of a very small group of Asian Americans. The deep divide of our country felt very tangible here.

Almost immediately after the election, my partner and I realized it was time to figure out how to get back to LA. With a renewed sense of purpose and focus, we returned to serve our communities in more grounded and expansive ways. And so just before the new year, we packed up a Uhaul and all the animals and made the trek back down the coast to our new little home in Long Beach.

It was time to take even bigger steps forward. I applied for a Masters in Arts in Art Management program at Claremont Graduate University and was accepted! I start this fall. My partner has already been apart of a wide range of recordings and new projects celebrating his music and ingenious creativity. All the fur babies have happily settled into our new home. And then on January 23rd, I found a swollen lymph node in my left arm pit. I had no signs of infection. It didn’t hurt. I pulled out my medical books and confirmed it was an axillary node connected to the breast. I made a phone doctor’s appointment. Within three minutes of talking to the doctor on the phone, he told me to hang up and immediately go into urgent care. This was at the height of covid numbers. The idea of going anywhere near a hospital stressed me out. But I did, double masked and gloved. Two days later I developed a lump in my left breast. And one week ago, I was officially diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer.

So, here we are…changed in so many ways. And although the future is probably gonna get messier before it gets better, I will honestly say I’m grateful for it all. I have learned and grown so much, I have dug in deeper than I thought possible. This quarantine has not been a gift but it has allowed us to reexamine what is important and vital for making our lives the master pieces we want to create. And for that, I feel very blessed. More to learn, more to do, but first a deep exhale. We made it this far.