Two years ago today, we woke up for the first time in a world that had underwent a sea change where the only things that seemed to matter were hand sanitizer hoarders, case count graphs, toilet paper shortages, and private zoos. We had just witnessed the NBA season get cancelled in the middle of a Mavericks vs Nuggets game, Donald Trump announce a travel ban across Europe in a late night address, Tom Hanks come down with the then-mysterious coronavirus...and then we woke up the next morning and ate breakfast on what is now rightfully seen as the first morning of 2020.
Four days ago, I went to work in-person for the first time in what will hopefully remain a permanent reopening of Impossible's office. I checked in at the front desk, showed them my vaccine card, received my little ID sticker signifying that I was a fully vaccinated employee, and with that distinction, ripped off my mask and proceeded through the halls to start my workday, the bottom half of my face feeling the open office air for virtually the first time.
It sounds stupid to say that the gravity of the pandemic did not hit me until this moment, but it really didn't. After over 700 days of craving normalcy, I finally felt that again. I didn't realize I hadn't felt completely normal yet until I felt normal again. There were other times where I didn't where a mask somewhere in public or the world felt like it was moving on from COVID, but in each of those instances, I either felt guilty for acting like the pandemic no longer existed or I just knew in the back of my mind that it wasn't yet gone. But ripping off my mask this time felt different. It felt like we were finally through. As if all the disappointment and boredom and unpredictability and anxiety that had brewed for two years disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. It had been such a constant weight on my shoulders for so long that I kind of forgot I was bearing it. And then it lifted.
I'm proud to say I look back fondly on the last two years. There's a sort of sepia tone coating all my early quarantine memories of driveway PIG games and marathon walks and The Last Dance binge watches. Nobody was getting the day they wanted, so everyone just tried to make something worthwhile out of the day they had. Every time I flashback to that period, the sun is always shining in the memory. It was a really simple time, and there will always be a certain romance in that. I miss the early days of quarantine.
And the pandemic was the exact checkpoint I needed to help me focus in on what was most important in my life. I feel I've come out the backside now a much more confident and mentally secure person because I had all that time to think about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and what the next steps I need to take are. On the surface, your senior year of college and your first year of full-time work sounds like the worst possible time to go through a comfort-busting pandemic, and that might still be correct. But COVID was definitely a filter that helped me ensure whatever I was devoting energy to was something I was truly motivated by because there simply wasn't much energy to spare. I feel much more grounded now than perhaps at any other point in my life, and whatever fat was still lingering around the edges of my personality and to-do list before the pandemic has certainly been trimmed off. I'm thankful COVID gave me this chance.
I really, really hope I don't have to write a third anniversary post next March. COVID better be nothing but an after thought by then. But now that the weight has been lifted, I feel justified in looking backward and smiling a bit. Good riddance, COVID-19.
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