At the end of 2019, I started this blog and launched this website with the intent of claiming my space on the internet to market my writing career. It was great. I felt good about it, I was getting followers and clicks on Pinterest, and I opened an Instagram to grow my space.

Mid-March, I was sitting in the Starbucks near my office one late afternoon. My phone blew up as I packed up: the first case of COVID-19 was in South Dakota. COVID had been in the US by that point for a period long enough to have sent my family to Sam’s Club to stock up in a frenzied way (as opposed to following a realistic shopping list), but the fear wasn’t real – not REALLY real – until I was outside under low clouds in the misty parking lot, dumbfounded and calling my mother. Her birthday had been two days before. I’d met my parents at a favorite low-key bar to celebrate. Mom and I took selfies. We had no idea it was the last time we’d go out for lunch.

As I write this, I paused just now. How to explain, summarize, what happened in days after I left that Starbuck parking lot? It felt like an eternity. Doors slamming shut. Locking. Afraid to even leave our front door – how did COVID carry in the air? Did it linger? Sanitizing the mailbox before opening it. Letting my kid binge Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and run up and down the hall with flat garbage bags like he was the school mascot waving a giant flag down the sideline on homecoming – all because my brain was churning to keep up.

Keep my baby safe.
Keep my parents safe.
I need Brett to be safe.

Over and over and over. It was all I heard.

But we all lived that. None of this is news to you, reader, because you suffered the same experiences, and possibly worse. At least we had toilet paper from that ill-planned Sam’s Club shopping spree.

As vaccinations are now on US soil – my husband, who is a nurse, volunteers on Saturday mornings to administer the shots to his fellow medical professionals. I live in a state that’s making international news for how poorly our state government bungled this, but I’ve learned that I too must come back to life, if only from my basement.

But how? I’m an introvert, so I easily settled into making our world very small. I have a lot of regrets around COVID but setting up a permanent office space in my home is not one of them. So how do I come back from this?

The only answer that’s come to me repeatedly: reinvigorate my professional passions.

Listen. I’m a writer. Before I was anything (a marketer, a girlfriend, fiancé, wife, mom), I was a writer. Translating that into something that I can make personally fulfilling and valuable for outside consumption has always been the struggle. I realized I started merging the two on this blog in 2019. My social planning calendar was drafted, and I was in the beginning stages of writing a business plan, all while wrapping up edits on The Right Kind of Light, being present with my family, and working a 40+ hour job. I. Was. Killing. It.

Then everything happened. And I ran out of words.

I posted here this summer, about how I had no words. Contradictory, I realize, but I managed to string together something eloquent enough that I wasn’t ashamed of publishing it.

There it was. I could still write creatively.

It made my blood move. I could feel it, the want, the drive to create again, swirling under my surface as summer faded to fall. Passion. I felt it.

So I sat down and planned out what this blog, and my social media presence could look like if I tried this again. To shift my voice from the fluffy side of writing to a discussion on what the industry might look like and how to break in now. To reassure fellow parents in similar boats to mine that yes, this time is nuts, but you’re not alone. To talk about my home community (shout out #onesiouxfalls), not from just a Sioux Falls-based perspective, but how we help small businesses stay afloat and help our communities that are struggling and will be for some time.

That’s what I want now. To lend a voice to an energy I feel brewing outside my basement walls. Swirling, like wind, like the blood in my veins as I wrote this summer.

So, I have a plan. And I’m back. Won’t you join me?

To never giving up,
​Stephanie

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Shoot. It’s been weeks? Yikes.

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Kid goes back to daycare. His parents are essential (one of us actually is), and so: keep job with health insurance to care for the kid and husband? Or keep my husband, who is giving something valuable to the community, from working?

Husband goes to work. I get my monitors from my office and dust off my desk from college. Should I buy a new chair?

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I buy a new chair. Its June already? It got warm outside. I didn’t notice. But I watched the leaves unfurl on the branches outside my window, slowing unfurling, and filling the sky from my new chair in the basement. My day job keeps ticking. My kid keeps going to daycare. My husband washes his scrubs separately from the rest of our laundry, and moves his shampoo and body wash from our master bathroom to the basement bathroom with little fanfare.

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Our mayor stops giving daily updates. Stores open again, and I venture out to get Starbucks. Weeks pass, and I get brave. I’ll get my hair cut. I deserve it. My split ends are killing me, our positive test numbers are down, and when I call for the appointment, the lady on the phone assures me hand sanitizer and face masks are on every person in the building.

Five days later, with cute hair and the rock in my stomach crumbling to pebbles, my state’s health department calls me. “You’ve been exposed. Self-quarantine.”

I test. I’m negative. My husband’s coworker’s friend got the same call I did, the same afternoon, and notes were compared. It was our stylist. He went to Florida the week before resuming work. I melt back to my basement office, and pull my hair from my eyes.

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I find a writing group online. Reading other writers concerns about publishing, the industry, and all of their beautiful work makes my heart beat. It takes a lot to tamper down my drive. Even if I’m not moving, my brain is, with incessant buzzing in my sleep, splicing hazy dreams with my to-do list for both my careers, my kid’s school, my husband’s schedule, and now a global pandemic. I used to think it was who I was. Now I know it’s what I do. It’s a clear problem; I haven’t gotten to the root of it yet.

I start leaving the house again. Grocery shopping here, Target there. My kid is never with. I used to dream of lazily wandering aisles again, not having to distract as we speed-walk past the graham cracker box with Olaf on it, or the entire dairy section because he melts down when we don’t buy another gallon of chocolate milk.

There’s nothing leisurely now about shopping. I balance my palms on the cart, and bump the cart along with my Quarantine-15. In. Out. Unconsciously hold my breath as I pass the woman wearing a mask like a chin strap. Watch a guy knock a box of masks off a grocery store greeter’s table and tell her they’re a “fucking joke.” Watch her pick the box up, and dust it off with bare hands. Feel a lump press upward in my throat. Wait to cry until I’m in my car.

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Wait for a vaccine. Wait for the election. Wait for the leaves to turn yellow and pile in front of my basement window. Wait for my husband to bring home our kid every day. Wait until I have anything valuable to say about this. About any of this.

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