If you wonder, some ways down the road, how things were during the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020, here is what I've been doing so far: 

• Cancelling plans and feeling like a jerk about it.
• Cleaning and processing things I've left undone for years: Making a bouncy ball from a kit. Putting up my microphone and laptop stand for my desk. If this goes on long enough, I may have to finally figure out what is going on with my archives.
• Gardening. Trying to channel this unfocused anxiety, this eternal waiting into the seeds of my garden instead–look, the radishes are coming up! That must be what I was waiting for.
• I received a book called Hexing the Patriarchy that has 26 spells in it. So I have been reading that and wanting to do witchcraft.  Mostly failing to do witchcraft.
• Actually I'm failing to do a lot of things: I could work on my writing projects more. I could do netflix parties. I could do virtual gaming. Instead we stay inside. We clean. We cook. We watch old shows. We go to bed early.
• Enjoying leftovers. I'm a little bit of a food hoarder, which you'd think would get worse during a pandemic when people are clearing the shelves of the store. Instead I'm now cracking open jars I've been ignoring, wondering how much goodness I can fabricate out of (seeming) thin air.
• Nervous energy! Learning the strengths and limitations of nervous energy
• Spontaneous tears. People are so good to each other. People are so terrible to each other.
• Ignoring MañanaCon's precarity with a willfulness not seen in years.
• Taking naps I cannot resist, my body putting me to bed despite all my mind's protestations.

Of course, if all this works, the memorable thing will be smaller than it seems. Will we forget all the lessons learned now? Will we remember the joy of spending time together? Will we remember what it was like to spend a whole spring in slow motion? Will we remember social distancing every year? Will we remember this precarity and build up more and more and more emergency savings? Will we institute universal basic income? Will I still want to be a witch?

 Nobody really knows. So….let's go see if more radishes sprouted.