For Everything But...'s March 2021 issue, I designed and lead the publication, while also writing a personal essay. The story in original format can be found here.
It’s hard to believe that a little over a year ago, I was walking around grocery stores maskless, hugging friends, and Frenching strangers. (Okay, that one’s not true, but I could’ve if I wanted to (with consent.)) Early March was a time of recklessness—a time I celebrated that Parasite Best Picture Oscars win and boasted proudly that “this was going to be our year.” Sure, I might have heard about the COVID-19 pandemic, but in my safe how-can-we-get-hit-from-a-2019-virus-when-we’re-forever-living-in-pre-or-post-Revolutionary-War-actually-it’s-kind-of-confusing-because-some-parts-of-town-act-like-we’re-set-during-the-war-and-others-act-like-we’re-still-under-British-rule-and-I-wish-someone-could-give-us-just-a-set-year Colonial Williamsburg where I attended undergraduate education at William & Mary, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal. Sure, we didn’t have vaccines, but we had dried up leeches in a bottle and moxie. The first time we were really advised to take the pandemic seriously was when we were told to not leave the country for Spring Break. But other than that, we ran off of pure blind hope that there weren’t outbreaks in Virginia yet, and thus the disease wouldn’t be able to break the ranks of Civil War battlefields, Revolutionary War battlefields, and more Civil War battlefields. There was this feeling that if everyone could just do their part, we wouldn’t have to deal with the virus—like I know Virginia’s for lovers, but come on… there’s a time and place.
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