At the beginning of March I managed to get myself the first dosage of the two-shot Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, followed up by the second dose I received yesterday. Since the moment I made my first appointment right on through to today, I’ve felt a genuinely high amount of anxiety about the whole situation. I fully believe in the efficacy of vaccines and think everyone should be rushing to get their own COVID vaccination scheduled and administered, but there’s just a gravitas to this whole situation that was and continues to be intimidating to me.

First and foremost, I hate needles. I’ve always had terrible anxiety about getting shots or having my blood drawn, so much so that whenever I have given blood, it’s been immediately followed by dizziness, nauseousness, and there were like two times where I just passed out during or immediately after being punctured. But that was only a small fraction of what was causing the anxiety for me.

The real thing that’s messing with me is how big this moment feels. We just lived through one of the wildest moments in history, where the entire world was hit by the same affliction. I can’t think of too many situations where someone might have just missed the whole “world going into lock-down” thing that spanned most of 2020 and continues into 2021. It’s arguably the most historic event of my lifetime, something that has and will continue to impact the rest of my life in one way or another.

But here I am, with a fresh bandage on my boo-boo that the lovely volunteers did put on me, trying to comprehend the gravity of what I just did. I just got a vaccine for the virus that stopped the world in its tracks. That’s such a big moment in my eyes, and the entire time leading up to it I couldn’t help but feel a little in awe and nervous about it all. But it’s done, and now I just have to wait for that medical cocktail to course through my veins and deal with whatever minor side effects come with it. I don’t want to experience flu-like symptoms, or fatigue, or soreness, but I’ll gladly endure it just to get on the other side of this viral nightmare.

I know this wasn’t about video games or whatever, but this has easily been the biggest thing that I’ve done this week. My tension and anxiety are still lingering, but I already feel better just knowing that I’ve done what I needed to do in order to beat this miserable virus. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be cursing the vaccine for making me feel shitty, but in the end it’ll all be worth it. So please, if you can get the shot you should absolutely do so. There’s no reason to prolong this international nightmare we’ve been enduring for over a year, any longer than we need to. And if you already got the shot, good for you, just please continue to wear a mask and be considerate of others.