Writing Prompt: Pandemic Reflections
What Comes to Mind When You Think About the Pandemic Anniversary?
It’s been quite a year — tell us your story
On Leap Day last year, I went to my friend Matt’s ninth birthday party. (To be clear, Matt is a full-blown 36-year-old, but because he was born on February 29, he’s only had nine actual birthdays. I find this terribly funny, and he’s a good sport about it.) I still remember standing in a warm, crowded bar that afternoon with Matt’s friends and family, sharing bowls of potato chips and chatting about the sinister virus making its way through Asia and Europe and how it was affecting our travel plans and grocery lists.
Suddenly, I found myself having a strange out-of-body experience: I looked around the room and thought, “Is this the last party I’ll ever go to?”
I wasn’t totally off, although there were certainly early pandemic assumptions that didn’t quite shake out: that we should be wiping down our cereal boxes with bleach (I’m embarrassed to say I totally bought into that viral YouTube video and even shared it with my blessedly skeptical colleagues who run the Coronavirus Blog); that (gulp) non-health care workers shouldn’t be wearing masks; that we’d never be able to find toilet paper again.
Since the first known Covid-19 cases appeared in January 2020, the disease has touched the world — nearly every aspect of our lives — in ways we couldn’t have imagined a year ago, though we certainly had our suspicions.
We’d love to see your reflections on the first anniversary of the pandemic. Share your story on Medium and use the tag Pandemic Reflections. (Once you hit “Publish” on your post, you can type it into the “Add a tag…” box.) You’ll be able to browse all submissions to the tag, unfiltered, right here, and some of our favorites may be curated or featured in a Medium publication over the coming weeks. A few prompts to get you started, though you’re welcome to write about anything you like:
- What final pre-pandemic memory do you keep returning to?
- What did you get wrong about the pandemic when it was just beginning?
- What do you wish you’d known or done differently one year ago?
- What were you and your loved ones or colleagues talking about a year ago?
- What early pandemic purchase are you happiest about? What do you regret buying (or not buying)?
If you’d like, feel free to link to this post at the end of your story so that your readers and followers can participate, too.
Stay safe, stay masked, and we’ll see you on the other side.
