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We鈥檙e all making tiny time capsules. You may not recognize it, but we鈥檙e all doing it, saving up the memories and experiences of our COVID-19 journey in some way. 

Perhaps your Instagram has become a collection of your isolation crafts, or the evolution of your sourdough, the devolution of your hairstyles. Maybe you鈥檙e journaling fastidiously or saving all of your wine corks from virtual happy hours in a special jar labeled vin du corona. 

Even if you鈥檙e not actively preserving the moment, when this is all over, the exponential increase in email communication will sit there in your inbox. You鈥檒l have an enduring electronic legacy of Amazon and DoorDash and Instacart receipts, all to remind you, should you ever care to look, of the months we all stayed home.

Tijah Bumgarner and Curren Sheldon have hit on an especially refreshing鈥攁nd entertaining鈥攚ay of encapsulating the new American reality. Both run in the same film industry circles in West Virginia. Bumgarner teaches film production at Marshall University and has done extensive narrative and documentary work; Sheldon is an Academy Award- and Emmy-nominated documentary filmmaker. Pre-COVID (that鈥檚 how we鈥檙e all marking time now, right?), the two were neighbors, friends, and occasional script-workshopping buddies. When the pandemic forced on-site filmmaking to an immediate halt and college campuses adjourned to dystopian Zoom-classrooms, the two had to get creative about how to be creative.

Sheldon said that after the mind-numbing boredom of the first three weeks of quarantine鈥斺�渢he longest weeks of my life鈥濃�攈e and Bumgarner decided to work on something light to distract them from the monotony. The idea for a short, scripted series 鈥渏ust sort of sprung up,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e just started doing it for something to do.鈥� 

For most of us, just needing 鈥渟omething to do鈥� has probably produced little more than a windowsill  floating in murky water鈥攎aybe a freshly organized pantry or wardrobe for the overachievers. Not so for Bumgarner and Sheldon. 

Their 鈥淨uarantine Life鈥� series, available on their YouTube channel , is a collection of comedic shorts the co-creators say are based on true stories鈥攁 claim which might be dubious to someone time-traveling a few months ahead from January. But is fully acceptable to any week-eight isolation warrior. Who among us, after all, hasn鈥檛 gone to absurd lengths for , or had a minor meltdown when faced with the 

The shorts are wonderfully concise, like snacks鈥攂ut less like a whole bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and more like those  you鈥檝e been practicing while dreaming of future dinner parties and forcing on your kids in the meantime. 鈥淨uarantine Life鈥� offers a chance to revel in the bewildering mundanity that so many of us stare down daily, now that our lives have moved fully into our houses.  

鈥淭imes are weird, and tough, but there鈥檚 still some sort of collective absurdity that we can all smile at,鈥� Sheldon says.

Although both creators have worked on Appalachia-focused documentary projects, you won鈥檛 find any overt references to mountain life. 鈥淚t鈥檚 more about the American-universal reach鈥攖he shared experience,鈥� Bumgarner says. 鈥淲e hope those waves go even further than just the region.鈥�

Both collaborators say the project is a healthy outlet, both for the new small anxieties of everyday life and for pent-up creative energy. Bumgarner says that, although not much else is going on in isolation, the invented timeline they work on鈥攕haring two finished shorts a week to their YouTube channel鈥攈as injected an energy and a welcome urgency into her workweek.

鈥淲hen we鈥檙e normally writing scripts,鈥� she says, 鈥測ou never really know when you鈥檙e going to be able to shoot them, or if you鈥檒l even be able to raise the money to be able to work on the next feature.鈥� The shorts, on the other hand, offer near-instant creative gratification and provide immediate engagement with an online audience hungry for relatable content and eager to share their feedback.

Their condensed production schedule, however, in no way equates to reduced quality; the series is beautifully shot. After adjusting to seeing celebrities, news anchors, co-workers and grandmas alike rendered only in tiny, grainy Brady-Bunch-boxes on our computer screens, it is startlingly intoxicating to see new faces doing everyday things in high definition. It鈥檚 as if the axes of perception have flipped: Since we now live in  realistic representations of humans doing now-normal things feel a bit eerie.

While socially distanced filmmaking certainly has challenges, Bumgarner and Sheldon have relied on the participation of co-quarantined partners and friends鈥攁nd a little sneaky editing to splice together scenes from their separate homes鈥攖o bring the series together with relative ease. Sheldon says they鈥檝e done their best to use what鈥檚 already at their disposal, 鈥渢o show what this current moment is like for a lot of people,鈥� with the hope that we can all eventually look back and say, 鈥淚 can鈥檛 believe that was our reality.鈥�

But for now? The two already have plenty of ideas for upcoming videos and are sure the partial reopening efforts we all look forward to will be rife with new micro-anxieties they can spin into observational comedy. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 cathartic to replay your own life out on the screen,鈥� Bumgarner says. 

They plan to keep producing 鈥淨uarantine Life鈥� shorts for as long as some sort of isolation measures are in effect. After all, Sheldon says, 鈥淵ou have to keep living your life鈥攁s safely as possible鈥攂ut you have to keep doing stuff that is creative and makes you happy, or you鈥檒l drive yourself mad.鈥�

This article was originally published by . It has been published here with permission.