Pandemic Diary

(a limited series)

This is a curated collection of lightly-edited excerpts from my daily journal. These are observations, my commentary on those observations, notes to myself, and other things I might want to remember about this period. It’s not everything (sorry — you don’t get to see everything), but it’s a lot.

It started as a pandemic-only collection, but I soon realized the picture would be artificial and incomplete if I didn’t include the context of cultural and racial and political tension that has been so intertwined with the pandemic, so those entries (and some others) are here now, too. And some life-as-usual, because despite everything, there really has been more of that than anything else.

Warning: politics ahead. I wrestled with this, and considered excluding the judgmental bits, and anything that might possibly offend anyone, but I decided to value honesty and disclosure over discretion. (More on that here: “Should I publish about politics?”) If this offends you, I’m sorry. But I call it as I see it.

This isn’t journalism. I’m aiming for personal understanding, not balance (see “Let me think about it”). And don’t expect coherence or continuity (that’s not my goal here)…