I’ve been distracted by the real world again. I’d love to spend tons and tons of time here in writer land but sometimes things happen. What I need to learn to be better about is actually writing down the things I’ve got bouncing around in the ol’ noggin.

Right now, here in the United States we have a panic happening about a global pandemic. People are getting sick at an alarming rate – and being terrible to each other at an even more alarming rate.

I’ve got a number of thoughts that I want to put here, but I’m still formulating how to pull it all together. For some frame of reference I tried to think of another event that really changed things across the country in such short order. The one I could think of most recently was the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

I was at work that day. I remember it quite clearly. I know where I was sitting and could paint you a picture of my surroundings. What isn’t as clear in my memory was the thought process I had going on. I was writing then. I didn’t have things in electronic format. I didn’t have a blog or really even understand what was involved in starting one at that point. What I did have was my sketch book. I always have a sketch book at work. It’s part of the job. I track my hours on projects, but a lot of other things land in there too. I’ve pulled 3 pertinent pages from that old book (it was almost 20 years ago at this point – a bit staggering to consider) and have them here.

I knew a number of people living in NYC at the time and made an effort to reach out to one of my closest friends of the time. I was lucky to get a response, and get it quickly.

I recall a number of things about price gouging, hoarding and people being terrible – but more than that I remember people reaching out to help each other.

I am seeing some things about the pandemic that are similar here in the US, but I am also seeing a number of differences. I want to give this all a lot more thought before I try to write up how I feel about it all. I need to put all the thoughts someplace. Having some historic context is going to matter to me at some point in the future.