My Year on Pandemic*

Thanks to Deb for suggesting this blog hop, and thanks to Caroline for linking me with your readers! (Here’s her post from yesterday)

With this crazy year when everyone stayed home, you’d think more writing would get done, but that’s not really what happened. At least not for me. Oh, what a year…

It was January 1, 2020 and I was on a plane to London with my fiancé, reading newspapers and magazines. A biology professor, he showed me an article about a new virus that had infected some people in China. “Oh, that’ll never make it over to the U.S.,” I assured him. “Things like that never do.”

Ha ha ha. Boy was I wrong. By the second weekend in March, the country was locked up tight. (At least parts of the country were.) As I’d spent the entire winter rehearsing and performing in a community theatre, I was particularly frustrated. Steve and I had things we wanted to do, people we wanted to hang out with, and now it was just us, the dog, and the TV set. (At least the TV set was big.) I was hopeful that the whole thing would blow over in a matter of weeks, and it would definitely be done by the time our wedding rolled around in October.

Not so fast…

The state of Florida was a weird place to spend a pandemic. Even in my city, St. Petersburg, which trends “blue,” the rules were relaxed. By May, restaurants had started opening up again for outdoor seating. The beaches were closed for awhile, but then the Powers that Be realized the virus doesn’t transmit too well outside. And with a governor like Ron “DeathSantis,” a Trump wannabe, the economy came before people’s health. There was talk that he lied about the number of cases and deaths; a scientist was fired and arrested in front of her small children.

So places that had closed down started back up again. Not all of them, of course. Small restaurants, gyms, yoga studios… none of those places were considered essential. But real estate was considered an essential industry, and so was construction. (My second job is sales for a roofing company.) So instead of holing up at home, working exclusively online, I was still going into people’s homes, trying to sell their houses or convince them to buy a roof from my company.

It was stressful.

Some homeowners were so terrified of the virus, they had me leave material on their porch and go over it on the phone. Others were dismissive, refused to wear a mask inside, and spent most of the appointment declaring COVID a hoax. While my real estate brokerage stopped having meetings in the office, the roofing company was business as usual after a few weeks. Some people wore masks, but others did not. Some worked at home, others came in. It made getting timely information out to customers… challenging. Add the labor shortage, the lumber shortage, a shingles shortage, and then a real estate sellers’ market like no one has ever seen before… work-wise, it was a very stressful year.

I have to admit, when I read stories about folks who hadn’t had to leave their houses in weeks, who had binged on every streaming service there was and watched everything on Netflix, I was a little jealous. I still had to shower every day. I still had to wear nice clean clothes. I still had to leave the house to do my job. And I still gained the 10 pounds everyone else did!

And the virus dragged on. When we finalized most of our plans in the summer of 2020, we were optimistic that a beach wedding followed by an outdoor reception would pass the COVID test. But when fall rolled around, our out-of-town guests—and most of the people on our guest list were from out of town—couldn’t fly to Florida and return to their home states without quarantining for weeks. Luckily, our hometown friends stepped up, and my parents live in driving distance, but our wedding was much smaller than we’d originally envisioned.

We still have some of the specially ordered masks, though!

So what a year. On the plus side, I moved in with my fiancé, married him, and spent lots and lots of wonderful quality time with him, including hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas. On the minus side, I barely saw my friends. On the plus side, I continued to sell houses and roofs. On the minus side, I finished two manuscripts that my agent deemed “unsellable.” On the plus side, my son spent several weeks with us during his breaks from law school, and earned his J.D. this May. On the minus side, now he’ll have to get a real job with only two weeks of vacation and our visits will be short.

What will this year bring? Lots of travel to make up for the trips we missed. (Unfortunately our July trip to Italy has been postponed to 2022.) Get togethers with friends. Perhaps hosting a party or two. And more writing!

Now let’s see what Deb’s year looked like!

*When I first started this blog, I called it “My Year on Vacation,” so this title seems apt.