I’ve been away for a while.

It’s not only because of the quarantine. Here’s what happened.

There was a major shake-up in January. I can’t really talk about it, but it had a huge impact on a lot of people. There was a lot of uncertainty and anxiety, and it took everything I had to get through each day.

After a couple of months and when things had started to settle, along came this virus to wreak havoc. The first month of quarantine was not a big deal for me, because I’ve been working from home for more than five years, and I barely needed to adjust. In a way I was gloating inwardly because while everyone I knew was scrambling to create a workspace at home and learning to use Zoom, I just kept plugging along.

I think I hit a wall after six weeks. (We are now on Week 8.) I suddenly felt antsy and I realized that I was missing the small things that I needed to recharge – weekends away, movies, eating out.

Thankfully some small restaurants where we live started reopening for delivery, so we got to have little treats like pizza and takoyaki. We even discovered a great Indian food delivery service. But the best treat I had last week was this:

My first taste of coffee in two months! Sigh. I’m not even supposed to have coffee, but Starbucks is mild so I allow myself to cheat once a month. It’s such an innocuous thing but it really made a difference. And yesterday we drove around our village and visited my sister and nieces – well actually, we just waved hi from the car. But it was a nice change of pace.

I’m sure everyone has been struggling. So when we can, let’s celebrate small victories like coffee, drive-by hellos, and writing.