COVID Has Made It Clear Writing Isn’t What Drives Me
I miss writing about living life
I drove through my city yesterday. It looked better than it did a month or two ago. Seats were taken up at outdoor cafes. People — wearing masks — strolled through a farmer’s market. A line waited patiently outside a food truck as a smiling man called out, “Going once, going twice!” into a microphone when orders were ready.
But the empty spaces that used to be full hit me in the heart. Bars and restaurants and coffee shops and streets and workplaces, all mostly empty. Vacant sidewalks. Shady trees shading no one.
The people I saw everyday in my work building I no longer see, and wonder if I ever will again. Front desk workers, maintenance workers, employees from other organizations. We weren’t close enough to exchange numbers and talk about whether they’ll come back to the building when it reopens, but their presence in my daily life was so profound in retrospect that I feel like I should have a way to contact them. The loss of anyone from our lives is shocking, but this was such an odd fade. The reality of how this extended separation would perpetuate missed connections took forever to sink in.
COVID has accelerated remote work and caused a possible, if temporary, migration from cities to suburbs. I appreciate that working…
