Edit: I seem to have lost track of the days since this all started; when I posted this yesterday, I wrote day 35 – it was actually day 37.

Even if you’re not going anywhere, pandemics are exhausting. I can’t even imagine being on the frontlines or being an essential service worker. Because I am just living a different-ish version of my normal life but at home and today, I am tired.

This week I’ve learned to make a podcast and start getting it distributed, I’ve edited videos and had an amazing phone call. Also my internet was failing and had to have MTS out this morning to fix it—thank god the problem was outside the house and they replaced a corroded wire and they were done by 9:10 AM, I was pretty impressed for the most part other than the guy on Twitter who told me he was not detecting any problems with our line yet the person on live chat told me there sure was an interruption in an outside line!
ALSO It’s only Tuesday.

I’ve had reasons to smile – a lot. Last Wedneday, Steve surprised me getting cookies and cinnamon buns from San Vito Coffeehouse delivered (also coffee for my parents). If you’re in the Peg and haven’t had San Vito, give them a call (or an instagram and check out Geordie doing Kitchen Karaoke). They’re our usual Thursday stop and having not had archery in 4+ weeks it has been a long while. People, they drive around with a coffee urn in there so it stays hot – brilliant! Thanks for continuing to be great, San Vito.
I’ve seen the good continuing to come out of people – like all the people on the MAS Mutual Aid Society Winnipeg group who have stepped up with no judgement to help a woman whose partner is getting out of prison in a few months, while she is 7 months pregnant and trying to get together what she can for his release and reintegration—people opening their closets for men’s clothing and shoes and baby clothes for this family as they prepare to start a new chapter. At a time things are chaotic for many, people are really doing their best to come together and that is incredible.

And then there is the sadness that goes beyond this virus. The families and communities left in turmoil after Canada’s worst mass shooting over the weekend in Nova Scotia. The people killed senselessly in a place where we have heard community is everything. The full impact of the shooting, and information about the 22 victims, is still unfolding. We are changed as a country in more ways than one—especially in Nova Scotia.

And yet, in the heartbreak, moments like this happen, a pilot in his single engine plane tracing a heart-shaped flight pattern in the skies above Nova Scotia.

Image from Huddle

We will be a different country, a different world after this is over.

I hope we will be a better one as we learn to care for one another and pay attention to the good things in the midst of chaos, heartbreak, pain and loss. I hope we continue to give as we can to one another—whatever that may look like.