I’m positive all of you have noticed the shifts in media these past few months regarding the global pandemic. It seems to be all anybody’s talking about — other headlines now must work thrice as hard to make even a subheading or a side story because it’s always “CORONAVIRUS” in bold type across each and every page and screen. 

I’m sure my celebrity lovers can relate to this; I don’t usually read Daily Mail or anything like that, but I have not seen one single headline about Khloe Kardashian’s awful photoshopping or Addison Rae’s TikTok boyfriend (who even cares?!) for what feels like weeks! I mean seriously, how am I supposed to function without reading about Emily Ratajkowski’s new neon bikini she showed off on her vacation in Malibu with this guy who’s not really her boyfriend, but sort of is?

To all the sports fanatics reading this, you’re guilty of this too. I remember when they said that March Madness was cancelled and my first thought was something along the lines of, “Damn, now do I have to spend more time reading those ridiculously unnecessary baseball stats?” The answer was OF COURSE! There was nothing else to write about! Adam Shefter and Adrian Wojnarowski have always been my favorites, but suddenly I didn’t want to read sets of numbers anymore. I wanted to watch a game start to finish, not just read about the amount of Yankees shortstops that won the World Series while they were sick with strep throat and also had exactly 2 RBI that game. Why. Do. We. Even. Care?

I’m a writer for the Satire section of the Bucknellian. Relatively small stuff, right? Well, when something begins to take up and consume every section of every single part of every single media outlet and our lives as we know them begin to warp and change until absolutely nobody could have predicted how things would be, then it becomes very difficult to find inspiration to write. If ESPN and Bleacher Report and Daily Mail and People and UsWeekly have trouble finding things to pick out and write about and inflate, then how am I possibly going to be able to do that? 

Writer’s block has never been so real. Which is exactly why I feel like every time I submit an article, all I’m doing is perpetuating the stereotype that women can’t be funny. I promise women can be funny! But I am not one of those women is all. 

My point is simply that coronavirus and this global pandemic has shifted the way a lot of us see and consume media and entertainment. The things we draw inspiration from have dissolved into things we don’t consider important anymore because we have too much to deal with on our plates. I just wanted to use my spot where I get to put my own words each week as a place to remind you and myself that just because things seem weird and strange doesn’t mean they always will be. Continue to look for your own inspirations and always keep reading.