Why now?

I started my first online journal a few weeks before 9/11 as a freshman in college. Every few years, I revisit what I wrote then and remember the uncertainty of the months that followed, remember visiting the ATM with new friends from the dorm and withdrawing the meager savings I'd managed to set aside for that first year at Beloit. It was an overreaction then, but none of us knew it at the time as we walked together beneath that eerily empty, beautifully blue sky. Rumors were flying and everyone seemed to know someone who supposedly knew what was going on. In truth, the people who claimed to have inside knowledge or seemed confident about what was going on in the world were dealing with just as much uncertainty as the rest of us.


In some ways, it was reassuring to revisit my old journal today. It's hard to really know what's going on right now, and COVID-19 is definitely making a lot of us nervous. My hope is that our country takes self-quarantining seriously and manages to "flatten the curve" in order to give everyone a fighting chance when they experience the virus. There's a lot of uncertainty right now so I'm trying to focus on the things that I can control: figuring out how to make a Buzz Lightyear birthday cake for my soon-to-be-four-year-old son Hank from the ingredients in my pantry, training my cat Gerri to stay off my desk while I'm working, keeping in touch with my brother and soon-to-be-sister-in-law who are self-quarantining after returning from a cruise in late January. My newest niece Zara will be born in the next couple of hours, and although I'm disappointed that I'll have to make do with pictures and video chats since I won't be able to visit her for a while, I'm looking forward to when I’ll able to meet her for the first time. I know that Zara will grow up in the new normal that comes after today's uncertainty.


I'm glad that I can revisit my own thoughts, decisions, and fears from almost twenty years ago because it does give me some reassurance today that the world may change, and that's definitely scary, but life continues and situations stabilize. I will never regret keeping a journal of that time in my life and that time in this country. It helped me to deal with my anxiety then, and it helps me to cope today.