I’m back!  It’s been a record two months since I’ve posted anything on this blog, but in case you were wondering, no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth.  I just didn’t have as much free time to post on here during the first two months of 2021.  But don’t worry, I’m back from my two-month hiatus with some more thoughts for your reading pleasure.

The past few days, I was inspired to share my own personal reflections from one year ago.  As I’m sure you are all aware, it was at this time last year – the second week of March 2020 – that everyone’s world changed due to COVID.  Although I’m sure we’re all tired of hearing about this pandemic that’s still going on one year later, I don’t really have any new insights to share that haven’t already been said ad nauseum.  Rather, this one-year milestone has inspired me to recount my personal experiences from what I call “COVID Week.”

My specific memories of this time last year start a few days before COVID Week, on Wednesday, March 4, 2020.  By that time, this new virus was in the news, and there were cases in several U.S. states, but no documented cases yet in Indiana where I live, so it hadn’t really sunk in yet.  My memory of that day involves attending a local high-profile high school basketball sectional tournament that evening.  Basketball is king in Indiana; there was a sellout crowd of over 3,000 people packed in the gym to watch two games featuring four of the state’s top teams battle it out for the right to move on to the next round.  That event sticks out in my mind because in April, the local newspaper would run an article telling the story of five people who were also in attendance at those games that night (including an athletic director and an assistant coach), who had each come down with COVID shortly afterward and died within that month.  It doesn’t take much to put 2 and 2 together and think, “Wow, how many people who were there that night had COVID and didn’t know it at the time?  It could have happened to me.”

Friday, March 6, 2020.  I remember that day, reading online that Indiana had confirmed its first documented COVID case.  If I remember correctly, that’s when people here started paying attention, like, “Oh, this isn’t just something going on elsewhere; it’s actually here!  What do we do about it?”  But life as we knew it was still going on as planned, and things hadn’t gotten crazy yet…

Saturday, March 7, 2020.  I drove an hour to see my high school alma mater play in their basketball sectional championship.  Since a COVID case had just been confirmed in Indiana, I remember briefly considering whether or not it was a good idea to go and be in a crowd, but really didn’t give it too much thought, and decided to go.  This was a different sectional tournament than the one I had attended three days prior, but also featuring a crowd of about 3,000 people.  I watched as my team came back from a 13-point deficit in the 4^th quarter to win the sectional championship game by one point in the final seconds, in one of the best basketball games I have attended in person.  It currently stands as the last game I have attended, and the last time I have attended a large gathering.  I now wonder how many people who were there had COVID and didn’t know it at the time.  Anyway, this stands out to me as one of my last memories of “normal life.”

Sunday, March 8, 2020.  I would attend church as usual that Sunday morning, not knowing it would be the last time I would set foot in church anywhere in a long time.  I don’t remember much about it, except talking with a friend afterward about this new virus in the news.  I recall that we both figured at the time that people were blowing this way out of proportion.  We wondered how bad it was going to be, but shared our concerns that everyone was starting to become paranoid, like, “Oh if I get this disease, I’m automatically going to die.”  Before I left, I think I told him, “I’ll see you next week.”  But of course I didn’t, as the events that unfolded that week prompted me to stay home on Sundays for several months.

Week of Monday, March 9, 2020.  I showed up to work as usual on Monday morning.  At some point, everyone was told to take our work laptops home with us every night, just in case we would end up having to work from home for a couple weeks.  I remember everyone receiving a series of emails at work, each with a new update on COVID-19.  I don’t remember exactly how these updates were worded, and I’m sure I’m exaggerating some of what I’m about to say, but my memory of them goes something like this:

• Update:  Due to this new virus, please take extra precautions.  Don’t show up to work if you’re sick.  Wash your hands for 20 seconds.  Cover your mouth when you sneeze.  (My thought: “People don’t already know this?”)
• New Update:  Continue to take extra precautions.  Remember, don’t show up to work if you’re sick.  Consider working from home if you can.  In addition to the common sense suggestions we told you before, don’t touch your face ever again.  Also, please don’t go on any cruises, and consider whether it’s necessary to do any traveling.
• NEW update:  Things are getting worse.  In addition to all the other updates we just told you, we’re closing our break room.  Also, please stay 6 feet away from each other, and don’t meet in conference rooms.
• NEW UPDATE:  In addition to everything else we’ve just said, all these events that we had already planned are now being cancelled due to this new virus.  (Meanwhile, I thought, “Isn’t this an overreaction?”)

At some point, I think I rolled my eyes and said, “If I hear one more update about COVID-19, I am going to scream!”  (Fortunately, I wasn’t being serious, since these updates kept coming every few minutes.)  Once we were notified that the break room was getting shut down at the end of whichever day it was, I made sure to go into the break room and fill my glass with raspberry iced tea while I still could.  (Don’t ask me why I remember this; I sometimes remember the most random details.)

In addition to work-related updates, I remember everything else in the world was starting to get cancelled.  So, the updates below are not specific to work, but this is how I remember them:

• UPDATE:  Stop! This replaces everything we just told you in our last update 5 minutes ago!  Forget everything we told you then!  Here are some more cancellations and/or precautions!
• NEWER UPDATE:  STOP! HOLD EVERYTHING!  THAT LAST UPDATE WE JUST GAVE YOU 2 MINUTES AGO – FORGET IT!  THIS REPLACES EVERYTHING WE JUST TOLD YOU!  THINGS ARE REALLY BAD NOW!  EVERYTHING IS CANCELLED!  PREPARE TO STAY HOME AND WAIT FOR DEATH!

Again, I’m sure I’m exaggerating those last updates; that’s just how I remember them.

Wednesday, March 11, 2020.  As a basketball fan (in case you didn’t already know that about me), the day things got strange was Wednesday, March 11, 2020 when the entire NBA shut down after one of its players tested positive for the virus.  (Ironically, this same player had just mocked the severity of the situation two days before, having touched all the microphones at a media interview, as well as a teammate’s personal belongings, causing him to get the virus too.)  I will always remember March 11 as COVID Day, because everyone remembers 9/11 (September 11), and March 11 (or 3/11) is exactly six months from 9/11.  Granted, those events are completely different and occurred in different years, but that’s how I remember the date.

Still on March 11.  The World Health Organization (WHO) declares COVID-19 a global pandemic.  One NBA player’s positive COVID tests shuts down the entire league.  The NCAA announces that its games would be played without fans.  Tom Hanks announces he has COVID.  Colleges start to cancel in-person classes for the rest of the semester.  Some K-12 schools close for two weeks, or until after Spring Break.  (This would eventually be longer.)  I start to get worried that travel would be shut down and that family members who had already traveled out of state the previous week might not be able to return.  (They made it back.)  I start to get worried that friends who were about to travel out of state might go and then not be able to return.  (They didn’t go.)

Thursday, March 12, 2020.  Things continued to get strange. Meanwhile, I went into work as normal, but with our break room closed, a previously planned social event at work cancelled, things were different.  I had to try to conduct a meeting with everyone 6 feet apart, which wasn’t easy.  The message that we might have to work from home for a little while soon continued to be repeated.  As I left work at the end of the day, I announced to those still in the office, “See you all TOMORROW!”  I haven’t seen most of them since.

That evening, I got a text from my boss, asking me if I can work from home the next day.  It would just be a one-day test involving a few employees, myself included, to see if our server can handle it if we needed to start having people work from home at some point.  Sure, no problem.  I can do that for one day.  After all, I’d be back on Monday, right?

Meanwhile, the NCAA cancelled their basketball tournament.  I remember thinking, “What?  Just yesterday, they said they would play the games, just without fans, and now they cancel it altogether?”  All of this seemed to me like an overreaction at the time.  As someone who doesn’t like change, what annoyed me the most (not just on the basketball front, but in general) was not the actual cancelling of events, but the constant announcements being made, only for those announcements to be made completely irrelevant two minutes later with a conflicting announcement.  (Of course, like many people, I was underestimating how bad everything was, but those were my thoughts as they were happening.)  The next day would be Friday the 13^th.  Surely things would get better, right?

Friday, March 13, 2020.  I was able to work from home with no issues, but outside of work, things continued to get weird.  The IHSAA canceled the remainder of its basketball tournament – the very tournament I had just attended the previous week.  But enough about basketball, what about actual matters of real life?  After I finished work, I decided to go grocery shopping before the stores ran out of everything.  I had heard on the news that stores were running low on supplies, due to people hoarding everything, including toilet paper.  I went to four different stores, but all the places were packed, and none of them had any toilet paper left.  I couldn’t help but think of the Simpsons episode where the entire town of Springfield panic-buys everything at the Kwik-E-Mart before a hurricane, leaving Marge to look at the cans of food that are left.  “Creamed eels?  Corn nog?  Wadded beef?”  Lisa urges her, “Mom, let’s just grab what we can and get out of here!”

Meanwhile, as I tried to mentally calculate how long the toilet paper I had at home would last, and as I tried to stock up on food and groceries, I started to get crowd anxiety.  Perhaps it was the thought of getting COVID from any one of the seemingly millions of people at that one Kroger location.  Perhaps it was just the fact that everyone was going crazy and buying everything in sight.  For whatever reason, I felt like I was about to have a panic attack in the middle of the store.  I managed to buy what I could and get out of there with no issues, but to this day, ever since then, I have experienced anxiety around crowds.  Not enough to actually give me a panic attack or anything like that, but enough to where I feel my stress level rising in busy stores, or at the thought of being in large gatherings or close quarters.

Sunday, March 15, 2020.  I decided to stay home from church that day and take advantage of the ability to watch it online, in what would become my routine once everything got shut down immediately afterward.  After that, I mostly watched the news that day, eventually distracting myself with that episode of The Big Bang Theory where Sheldon is afraid of getting germs in a hospital, but accidentally walks into a quarantine area, is exposed to a biohazard, and has to stay in hospital quarantine for two weeks.  I don’t remember much else about that day, until that night when my boss called me to say, “Everyone is working from home for the next three weeks.”  I thought, “What?  Three weeks?  How are going to do this for three whole weeks?”  Little did we know at the time that three weeks would (at least for the most part) turn into a whole year…and counting.

Of course, things continued to get crazy from there.  Pretty soon, I would get bored from staying at home all the time and start this blog.  And while I don’t need to recap the entire year since then for you, COVID Week by itself was so memorable that now that we’ve reached its one-year anniversary, I was inspired to take a trip down memory lane.  Perhaps some people were affected more significantly or directly by these events than I was, and I’m thankful that COVID Week didn’t directly affect me more than it did, but I wanted to share my experiences and memories from one year ago from my perspective.  Maybe next time I’ll try to rekindle some more pleasant memories.  I’ll try to post again in less than two months.  Until next time…thank you for reading, and stay healthy and COVID-free.