When I first started counting our days of self-isolation on my blog, it was supposed to be just for lockdown. That is to say, temporary. Lockdown was supposed to solve the problem.
But then the government threw away our chance to get the pandemic under control, so I and my family kept self-isolating, and I kept counting the days. And counting. And counting.
At first the posts were numbered but uncategorized unless they happened to fit into preexisting categories, because I didn’t want to give a category name to a temporary situation. Now we are at Day 156, which is a number more than high enough to dispel any lingering ideas about temporariness. So recently I created a category, called “Pandemic Days,” for my numbered posts, and I’ve been slowly updating the older posts to include it.
We know now that the virus is here to stay. There’s unlikely to ever come a day when the country can declare victory over it. So when will I be able to stop my count?
I started the count on the day after schools closed, so it would make sense to end the count on the day when the kids finally go back to school in person. That would be a sure sign that our lives had returned to normal. I wish I had some idea of when that would be, because it would be our light at the end of the tunnel. I just have to keep believing that it will happen, and soon, because I am so tired of these Pandemic Days.