How has a year in the pandemic changed you?
In the coming week, we’ll reach the anniversary of the day the World Health Organization declared that the planet was in a pandemic. March 11, 2020.
It was the day Rita Wilson and her husband, Tom Hanks, announced they’d been diagnosed with the new disease whose official name hadn’t quite sunk in. It was the day the NBA suspended its season. On that day, the president announced a travel ban from Europe, the stock market plummeted, and in Chicago, the St. Patrick’s Day parades were canceled. It was the day the truth of our new life began, slowly, to sink in. Few of us could have imagined then that within a year COVID would be responsible for the deaths of more than half a million Americans.
Today, in honor of that anniversary, we present this special “My Year of COVID Questionnaire.” It’s a chance to take inventory of how the past year changed you, or didn’t, and to think ahead to the coming year.
1. Have you changed physically in the past year in a way you attribute to the pandemic?
If you answer “Don’t get me started,” you will not be alone.
2. How has the pandemic affected your mental health?
If the word “coronacoaster” pops to mind, you will not be alone.
3. Name two ways you’ve found to feel more healthy mentally.
OK, one?
4. Name one good habit you’ve cultivated during your pandemic year.
If you answer “none,” don’t worry. It’s never too late to start.
5. Name a bad habit you’ve cultivated during your pandemic year.
If your answer includes daily large quantities of chocolate, you will not be alone.
6. Is there someone — or ones — who have helped you get through this year?
Have you thanked them?
7. Who have you helped?
Helping someone else has made you feel better, hasn’t it?
8. Name someone outside your pandemic bubble you really miss hugging.
Have you let them know?
9. What is the farthest you’ve traveled from home this year?
10. What former habits or routines disrupted by the pandemic are ones you’re unlikely to resume?
11. What do you spend less money on now than you did a year ago?
If you answered coffee, you will not be alone.
12. What do you spend more money on?
If you answered alcohol, you will not be alone.
13. When was the last time you dined with someone outside your pandemic bubble?
Are you sure you should have done that? Not judging. Just asking.
14. What’s your favorite pandemic purchase?
Note: A pandemic purchase is something you bought out of desire, not necessity, something you imagined would ease your pandemic anxiety, or just add variety to your monotonous pandemic life. For example, a new pillow.
15. What did you buy imagining it would ease your pandemic anxiety only to discover you’d wasted money?
You are not alone.
16. Do you remember your first Zoom?
If you still have never Zoomed, congratulations.
17. What has the pandemic caused you to appreciate more than you used to?
If you answer any of the following, you will not be alone: health care workers, delivery people, grocery store clerks. The people you love. Good health. Good neighbors. Sunny days. Walking. Everything.
18. Name one small, unexpected thing you’ve missed.
If you answer “chitchat with people I barely know” — baristas, fellow bus riders — you will not be alone.
19. Has the pandemic changed the way you use space in your home? If so, how?
If you answer, “Not enough because my cheapskate company won’t pay for an ergonomic chair,” you will not be alone.
20. Do you remember your first mask?
21. How many masks do you own now?
22. What did you buy during early pandemic panic that you’ve never used?
If you answered a jug of aloe vera or frozen tri-colored carrots, you will not be alone.
23. Did you ever stockpile toilet paper? Do you still?
It’s OK to answer yes to both. No one but you will see these answers.
24. On a typical weekday, how do you dress differently now than you did a year ago?
Underwear is included in this question.
25. Why do the clothes you haven’t worn in a year look so pathetic? And should you get rid of them?
Some of these questions are really hard.
26. What’s the biggest mistake you made during the pandemic?
If you answered “not wearing a mask when I should have,” you will not be alone.
27. Which of the following descriptions would you apply to the past year: Hard. Exhausting. Interesting. Enlightening. Long. Confusing. Sometimes beautiful.
“All of the above” is acceptable.
28. Have you attended a virtual memorial for someone who died this year?
Take a moment now to remember.
29. If you could live the past year again — in the pandemic — what would you do differently?
Yes, yes, this is a theoretical question. But the answer might help in the future because we’re not out of this yet.
30. What would you like people who go through the next pandemic to understand that you didn’t know a year ago?
Don’t worry if you don’t know the answer. We won’t understand what happened to us in the past year until the pandemic is over. And one day it will be.