Two years ago

 So okay, I guess it was 11 March 2020 that the pandemic was officially declared a pandemic. For me, March 13 is Pandemic Day for a couple of reasons.

For one thing: it's burned into my brain because it would have been my father's 85th birthday (he had died the end of July 2019). Also, in a happier timeline, I would have been gearing up to get on a train to visit my mother for spring break - I had cancelled that trip a week or so earlier, "out of concern," as they say. 

I put together, with the help of someone on ITFF with more epidemiological background than I had, a short lecture on disease spread and the state of what we knew about the novel coronavirus at that time. I subbed it in for the lecture I would have been doing (I think it was over interspecific competition). We were all kind of anticipating things happening - and then midway through the class students' phone alerts started to chime, and one guy pulled his phone out and looked and said "They did it, they just said we're going all virtual after spring break"

I wound up the lecture, expressed a wish that everyone stayed safe and a hope that we'd be back in person in April (hah). I told them I'd let them know when I knew more but to take their class materials home with them if they could.

And then I think.....I went home? Or maybe I went to Pruett's first to stock up on a few things, and then went home, and kind of stared at a wall for a while.

A lot of the feeling I had in those times was fundamentally "this can't be happening" - a sense of unreality that also cycled into fear as I realized that it really WAS happening. (I feel much the same right now about the war in Ukraine and especially the possibility of nuclear war)

They shut everything down for two weeks; at the end  of that time we were to teach virtually to the best of our ability. At first they said we could do it from campus, which would have been easier, then they decided THAT wasn't safe* and told us we all had to stay home.

(*in retrospect? It probably was. We had been good at staying 6' to 10' feet apart, we could have staggered our schedules so only a few of us were in at any one time. One of my colleagues who had just moved to a house outside of town and didn't have reliable internet "sneaked" in late in the evenings to upload things, it was the only way he could). 

I remember the emphasis on disinfection and handwashing and surface-danger. Now, don't get me wrong - washing your hands is a good thing. In the before-times I washed my hands after using the loo and before eating or handling food, and after teaching a lab where we used chemicals or soil or anything messy, and sometimes after I'd been outside if I handled things that might have had bacteria. But now I was washing them in between times, and while we were still teaching in-person, I did every time after leaving the classroom.

There was also the "wipe down the groceries" thing. And I knew people who left their mail in the garage for 48 hours before opening it.

we learned, I think it was in the summer? that this was largely useless (except, perhaps, for handwashing, but that I really didn't need to do it more often than what I had done in the before times). Earlier, I had quit the "wipe down the groceries" thing, figuring it made more sense to just wash my hands after handling them, and I was prepared enough that I didn't have to touch the "new" groceries for 24 hours or so.

Eventually the emphasis on masks started (after the initial "noble lie," trying to keep citizens from being greedy and grabbing up all the medical grade supplies so the doctors and nurses didn't have any). I sewed cloth masks and bought some others, and, like a lot of people, treated them as hazardous waste, using the donning/doffing procedure. Again, I've relaxed on that - yes, I still wear an N94 in the classroom (partly for students, some of whom have medically fragile relatives, partly to lessen my risk of a breakthrough) and in crowded indoor spaces (in several of the shops on Saturday, I didn't bother, as I was the only one in there other than the people working, and I wasn't in the shop for more than five minutes). 

Mostly I stayed home. I remember that spring break week, watching crummy "webinars" that was actually put out by a company that ran online for-profit classes (so: arguably one of our competitors) and tried to figure out what to do. Listened to a lot of BBC news on my phone, knit a couple dishcloths I ultimately sent to my mom.

In the end, I opted to just record myself lecturing. We were asked not to do synchronous stuff because of concerns about people trying to have their kids do online school at the same time, or who had spotty connections. I also did short bits - like 10 or fifteen minute segments - so they'd be easier to download. I learned how to do online exams. I mined my files for old data so that students could do data analysis for the labs we'd have done, since we couldn't collect the data ourselves. 

I bought a desk for home. I bought a desk chair. I put them in my front window because the thought of staring at a blank wall while I worked was intolerable to me. 

Spring wore into summer. Classes ended with a whimper, not a bang (no graduation, struggles submitting grades online because we had been force-migrated to a new online system of doing things and we "broke up" for the pandemic before they had a chance to train us in it). I made it through the summer, somehow - I guess I read a lot, setting Pomodoros to keep myself on track. I picked away at knitting and embroidery projects as I sat at my computer. 

I remember being really worried about fall 2020, but opting to teach in person, because the thought of being cooped up in my house much longer seemed worse than the risk of contracting covid. I made it through the fall (even as I had considered filling out a 'dnr' form in case I got covid and needed intubated - I was not sure I wanted that and not sure I wanted to maybe take a place in an overcrowded hospital from someone with a family to support or kids to care for). Spend a lonely Thanksgiving and Christmas at home. 

Made it through spring 2021, was able to get vaccinated as spring was coming....

And I'm still here. As we head into year 3, as I begin to realize that the changes we've made are, for many of us, likely permanent - less travel, fewer meals in restaurants, nervously keeping an eye on case counts (they're rising again in the UK, if they rise again here I lock down again, or plan on getting yet another booster if recommended). Right now COVID is in the news a LOT less, partly because some of the people in power have declared it "over," but mainly because there's another existential threat we're facing. 

One thing I've realized in this time is how isolated I am. I don't have a lot of close local friends, and certainly no one who doesn't have other family responsibilities. I've realized a lot of people don't see eye to eye with me on things, and in some cases I've had to limit contact with some folks, at least before I could be vaccinated. I've become much less comfortable with just my own company; I need the sound of human voices around me more than I once did, or some kind of quiet music so it's not silent. And I need more distractions, but ironically, some of the things I used to enjoy - police procedurals, mystery novels, even some novels (like "The Three Musketeers," which I never finished and may never go back to) have too much violence and too much death in them; I can really only deal well with lighter things - some nonfiction works (like "Last Train to Hilversum") and I just started reading some of the Jeeves and Wooster short stories on the grounds that nothing very bad (other than perhaps Bertie being embarrassing) happens in those. I watch a lot more cartoons. (And I'm glad to see some sitcoms have come back - I like "Ghosts" a lot, and "Bob (hearts) Abishola" and even some of the others I watch because they're on, and they're light, and nothing too very bad happens in them* It seems like for a few years sitcoms largely went away, and....I dunno. I like them. I like shows where the problem gets resolved in 22 minutes, and people laugh along the way. It seems like the ones now are slightly better than some of the previous years' ones)

(*one of them did have a miscarriage storyline but even that seemed to not deal long-lasting damage to the people, the way a real-world one would)

I don't know. Onward and upward, I guess. (Though I hope, not "upward" in the sense of "premature ascension into Heaven as the result of a nuclear war). It's a little harder to keep going now, a little harder to find hope and to trust that the world is fundamentally a good place. Maybe what the pandemic did to me was make me finally grow up all the way? I don't know. I don't.....totally like.....what I've become but I also don't really know how to go back (or maybe: go forward, since there's no going back. Not sure how to change my attitude to be more able to roll with spikes in viral transmission and supply chain issues and all that; I've never been good at just rolling with things but this seems worse). I wish I were better at finding some consolation in all this but it's hard some days.