Well. Here we are.
It’s 11:15 on a Friday night, and we’ve reached the final day of dailies.
It’s been one-hundred and one days since I was laid off from my job, and I had nothing better to do but start a blog and talk about how the little things in quarantine were annoying me.
What am I going to cook? Is it okay to drink coffee at 7:00 in the night? How about beer at 10:00 AM?
Now, all these days latter, we’ve accomplished so much more.
Words I’ve written have reported injustice in Detroit, and through the country.
There have been moments of fiction to lull us far away from the fear and confusion of the moment that we often faced from the first fifty or so days.
Every now and then, I wasn’t sure what to say, and I played off of that; maybe not always to the best of my ability.
I’ve expressed my fears, my loves, my losses, my hopes.
You’ve probably managed to learn a lot about me since the beginning of all of this, while I still don’t recognize you.
But I’m so glad that you have.
Really, it’s hard to imagine over one hundred days ago now, that this little spur of the moment project would become what it’s turned out to be.
Never would I dreamed that through this silly blog I’d end up sending emails and pitches to the Village Voice, The Atlantic, whatever.
I couldn’t have expected that my friends and family member that I haven’t spoken to in years would reach out and tell me how this blog has been a rock; a daily reminder that we’re mortal and all dealing with the same dilemma; albeit, maybe a little bit differently.
Time has passed in the strangest spells, have you noticed that?
It sure doesn’t feel like it’s been one hundred days, but it also feels like I’ve been working on this project since the day I took my mandatory sixth grade computer class.
In fact, that’s the first time I’ve thought of that class in years.
Who’s to tell me that this isn’t just a dream from when I fell asleep watching Clippy, the Microsoft assistant that led me through different dopey programs from that year.
Maybe this is just an assignment gone wrong, and I’m about to pop back to that life of mind that I’ve long since abandoned, as the computer monitor blinks in a dark classroom.
Yeah. That sounds about right.
The moment that I post this blog, I’m going to fall all the way back to sixth grade, and this will all seem like a very strange dream.
I’ll go back to packing school lunches and bussing home so that I can play video games on the television in the basement.
The one with the speakers that my brothers set up to surround the couch, for maximum efficiency.
I’ll be back to taking tests, charting how fast I’m able to type, and with how many errors.
I wonder if I’ll still remember everyone’s name.
.
.
.
Micah Mabey
