I’m 29 at the time of writing this, so this was about three years ago. I’d really like to not have to revisit the COVID days, but it did happen.

I don’t want to revisit them because I don’t want to acknowledge how much changed. Change is rarely instant, and you don’t notice it as it happens. But one day, you look at the world around you and realize that it’s not what it used to be. The little things, like how people stay indoors more. How some of your favorite musicians, who have put out album after album regularly haven’t released anything after 2019. Remembering old faces who couldn’t withstand the virus’ ravages, or witnessing what it was doing in our hospitals. Then there’s what we were forced to confront as a society: that our divisions don’t just run along politics and lifestyle, but reality itself.

Maybe I’m naive for thinking all that. I’m not going to pretend I’m Mr. Worldly; it’s one of my biggest areas of self-consciousness: how little of the world I have seen, compared to some. I’m not talking about foreign lands and wonderful sights, but everything including and between. I feel like every day I’m not discovering something new, committing it to memory and growing as a person, it’s worse than stagnation. I also realize I’ve likely got an undiagnosed mental condition or two and the whole childhood thing working against me, so I try to treat these moments of self-doubt with a grain of salt.

Despite being a hobbyist writer since my teenage years, I never took any creative writing class until spring of 2020. It was taught by this wonderful woman who knew when to instruct and when to let us speak. Split into sections (Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry and a final project) we’d read several works in the form, then be told to write our own. After that, we were assigned two people, whose work we would have to read and write a one-page review of. The way it worked out, every one of us ended up with pages of thoughtful feedback and eager discussions on the writing itself. No one had an ego, or they knew to ignore it.

And the talent! There were so many writers of caliber in that classroom, it was like heaven. I hung onto every word of critique, scanning their feedback to PDFs so I could refer to them when needed. If those philosophy courses I took last year fueled my soul, then this course fueled my passion. Even when we moved to remote class sessions, our enthusiasm wasn’t dampened. As a matter of fact, a few of us in the class grew close over shared interest in silliness, forming our own group to chat in, form a fun but fleeting Dungeons and Dragons group we even invited the professor to join, and overall use as a way to stay connected with people while we were cooped up in our own homes.

As uncertain as the future felt, as stores were empty, people were panicking, and the body count worldwide began to pile up, I still felt hopeful. Though, it was early in the pandemic.