How I Filled My Second Coronavirus Journal
by Adam
I grabbed another beautiful notebook to match my first coronavirus journal. I began March 23 with news and numbers. Then I wrote, “I didn’t double-check the numbers.” A sign of the times: number fatigue.
Later there’s eleven pages on the occasion of a panic attack, then I swerve to gaming out what humanity will look like on the other side. How does this change us? No answers, just questions. I wonder if this second notebook repeats the worries in the first one. Am I turning into Jack Torrance?
I capture horrifying coronavirus dreams and some relief that we’ve isolated beyond the two-week incubation period. I drop ideas that go nowhere: “I wonder if people are playing chess by postcard?”
The notebook documents internal battles to find a moment to focus and things we never thought we’d say about the outside world. “I think we’ll get more instructions” is a strange comment about groceries.
Two weeks pass because I lost my notebook. How am I losing things when I’m not going anywhere? In the gap between entries, the number of deaths from COVID-19 more than doubled from 111,000 to 224,000.
On a blank page, I confess to doing what I swore I wouldn’t do: waiting in line for a fancy take-home meal.
Finally there are entries almost impossible to believe:
My mom attended a Zoom funeral and it timed out after 40 minutes because the hosts were using a free account.
