Before It Happened
One of the nicest things about keeping a bullet journal (beyond the fact that I don’t forget to do things) is that I have a single sentence that sums up every single day since May 2014. I like to flip back and look at what I was doing on the same day a year earlier or figure out how much time passed between two events.
But lately, I’ve been flipping to February and watching life change. It goes from the pandemic being barely mentioned to mentioned frequently to mentioned every day. I can literally see the moment where it flips over from random-event-that-may-or-may-not-ever-reach-us to event-that-is-everywhere-in-the-world.
There is the time before, the old normal, and the time now, the new normal.
There was an article in LitHub about the last train trip the author took before travel stopped. She meant to write an essay about why people should write on trains. Instead, she wrote an essay on grief and fear; two feelings that keep growing for her because there’s nowhere she can go to move away from them from a few moments. They’re always in the home because all of us are always in the home.
She explains, “One of the troubles with writing, now—one the troubles I’m having writing this essay—is that in our forced isolation grief gets in the way, and so does fear. I guess this has been true for me for longer than I’ve realized. Moving fast kept the fear and grief at bay. But now there’s nowhere to go.”
It is so strange to see my journal change from plans and meetings and errands to home, just home, pretty much every day. What was unfathomable in February is happening now. I think if I had to describe the feeling that keeps popping up for me, it’s disbelief. How can things be like this now when they weren’t like this just a month or two ago? Disbelief keeps following me around the home because there’s no place to go and move away from the feeling for a little bit.
That Melissa from two months ago has no clue what is coming down the road.
5 comments
Yep. I splurged on a fancy Erin Condren planner for this year, and I haven’t even looked it in a month. No plans that aren’t directly related to work, and I can access those readily on my computer while I’m working.
I wish I had a record like your bullet planner. That would be fun to look back over!
I keep a Filofax week on two pages planner… every week, I turn over a new page & cross out events that have been cancelled or postponed to some yet-undetermined date in the future. I actually did write (in retrospect) “The Last Normal Day” on Thursday, March 12th, because that was the last time we did some of our normal activities. Our usual grocery shopping day is Monday, but by Thursday, we could kind of see what was coming, and thought we should stock up on a few more things — so we went to the supermarket (which was busier than usual, albeit not swamped yet), had lunch there, picked up some stuff, brought it all home to put away, then went to the drugstore and then the bookstore for a Starbucks and a browse. Just a few hours later, there were reports of huge lineups at supermarkets across the city and panic buying. Less than a week later, on the 17th, the premier declared a state of emergency. And here we are…!
I’ve been writing down the numbers of total cases & total deaths each week on Monday, for the world, the U.S., Canada and Ontario. It’s been very sobering to watch those numbers going up and up and up.
Yes, the disbelief. When I see people in masks, and wear one myself, I am shocked at how quickly it came to this, at how recently things were “normal.”
Love that your bullet journal tracks these developments so concisely for you.
I wish I had a record of February and early March like this. Not that it would be as intense as yours, but to see how quickly things changed. Okay – I just looked back at my calendar. I met a US friend who was in town on 21 February. I don’t think I worried that she might have imported the virus then. But just a couple of weeks later, it would have been very different. I remember going out for lunch 0n 9 March, thinking that we might not be able to do that soon.
Yes, ditto to Lori, the disbelief. The not going anywhere, the walking around the loop in my countryish area and freaking out when a runner is coming down the other side of the road, or a bike swoops in from behind us. The online school. I am TERRIBLE at bullet journaling, so you are so lucky to have that record, although also like a blessing and a curse to see that 2 months ago Mel, and how she has no clue how weird the world is going to get. My calendar keeps popping up with appointments I made way in advance, and it’s so weird and sad to see a massage appointment that isn’t going to happen… the thought of paying someone to touch you (which I adore and my stress spots need so badly) seems so anti-reality now. But I miss it. But I also think it will be weird when we get to the point where I don’t have appointments in there anymore, and it’s all just a slate of nothing other than online events. Weird, weird, weird.