During Covid, ever feel like you’re in an apocalyptic movie?
That was going through my mind this past spring, during the shelter-in-place order in March and April. As I drove through Tulsa, I felt this eerie chill as I went past empty parking lots of schools, churches, restaurants, and other businesses deemed non-essential. Hardly anyone was driving on the highways and streets especially at night.
Only packed parking lots were essential businesses and hospitals. Inside Costco, the lines were long because of social distancing and quiet because people didn’t congregate in conversational circles. Made me wonder what life was like during World War II, with rationing.
In a historic period with a global pandemic, it’s important to record these times. Times that affect not just our present but our future. Who knows what 2021 will look like and what life will be like, post-Covid. Certain aspects of life will never be the same. The pandemic is like a setting of a story giving context to our times, our personal lives, and our communities.
How are you affected? And how are you managing your life?
As a writer, I’m journaling my experiences, observations, and feelings. This is helping me to process my thoughts and even my issues I’m grappling with.
I also appreciate reading both novels and non-fiction accounts of historic times and how people managed their lives. Think how Grapes of Wrath helped us understand the ravages and inhumanity people faced during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
My grandma is ninety-nine and still spry. She was born during the Great Depression. She was raised on a farm without electricity or a phone line, got married, pregnant, and had my dad during World War II. Her husband, my grandpa, served in the war.
She often shares that this younger generation can’t comprehend what life was like back then. She once stood in a food line with her father. Her family almost lost their farm during the Depression, but a neighbor helped them pay their taxes. She worked as a full-time nanny at fifteen, unable to attend high school because her family lived too far from town.
Listening to her and curating her stories (I helped with my parents memoir and also fictionalized my grandma’s love story) help me to understand my times and realize that our nation and the world has endured through catastrophic events before.
I encourage you to journal your experience, not just for yourself but for the future generations. Perhaps your children, grandchildren, or people you’ll never meet, will read your story for historic significance. You could use the pandemic as inspiration for a novel or a memoir. Or on a smaller scale, write a short story, essay, blog or vlog post, or even a letter to your family.
It’s inspiring and many times, shocking how much we have inside of us, we either hadn’t shared out loud, or even to ourselves, but it’s dwelling down deep in the well. And when we journal or write about our experiences, feelings, and thoughts, it’s like a putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Other aspects of our lives make sense. Or at least helps us see the grander picture, putting the present moment into perspective.
Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash
Activation:
- What are some highlights you’ve experienced during this pandemic?
- What are some low spots you’ve experienced?
- How has the pandemic affected how you see the world?
My Answers:
Highlights:
- Having more time at home. A month or two before the pandemic, I was at a tipping point with stress. I felt as though I couldn’t handle anymore obligations and commitments or I’d collapse under the weight. I once told God, “I can’t handle much more. I need relief.” Once our governor declared the shelter in-place that affected Tulsa, I could breathe since I didn’t have physical meetings and gatherings to attend to.
- More time to write. I submitted two novels to editors during the pandemic since my nights were available.
- I got married. On March 25th, I married my fiance at 4 pm, with the shelter in place enforced at midnight. It was amazing to spend COVID with my new husband where we had the luxury of investing in our marriage without the intrusion of meetings, gatherings, and other external commitments.
Lows:
- Trying to plan a larger wedding during COVID. We kept our original wedding date of July 25, but as we moved forward with wedding planning, we faced setbacks, ever-changing restrictions, and uncertainty. Although we kept our original date and the wedding was beyond what I imagined, the stress was high.
- Physical separation with community. After a few months, I struggled with not meeting face-to-face at certain gatherings, especially church and small groups. By mid-May and June, I needed some physical interaction with community even if only a very intimate gathering.
- Navigate socially with COVID protocols. It became strange to decipher how to handle social interactions when people were on different aspects of the safety spectrum. Some refuse to gather socially until there’s a vaccine, while others have no fear, and will hug you and go anywhere, as though the virus doesn’t exist. I’m somewhere in between, staying relatively safe while interacting with community. I want to be sensitive to all my friends and family’s standards, but handling social situations can be like walking through a land mine.
My world view:
- I’m seeing more clearly how dependent and weak I am. And how I need to depend on Jesus, realizing the control and safety I clung to, was an illusion. I am a scheduled, regimented person who doesn’t deal with change and uncertainty very well, but COVID was like an armed guard, forcing me to adjust. I would’ve never just gotten married in 24 hours, but in this uncertain environment, I took the leap.
- Need to think for myself about my standard of COVID protocol. I’ve had to soul search to understand my view of COVID protocols, especially with social gathering and government guidelines. I’ve heard many dissenting views and arguments from both sides, I became disillusioned with who to believe and what’s accurate. But while I can gather information and facts, it’s up to me to decide what I’m comfortable with.
- Anything can happen. It was awakening to experience all the shut downs, people and children wearing masks, and to maintain social distancing as though we endured an apocalyptic event. Having read these type of novels, I never thought it could happen to us on the level it did. Not the devastating physical destruction like a global apocalypse, but people not traveling, staying at home, and cities shut down felt like what I had imagined. So, I am more diligent about the world and my surroundings. More alert the wellbeing of my community of family and friends. I’ve reached out to my community more as the overall wellbeing of many are in jeopardy or weighing in the balance.
How about you? Please share insights, your highs and lows, and changing views in Comments. Thank you!
Featured Image Photo by Apollo Reyes on Unsplash.