One thing I’ve learned in this pandemic is that time is not my obstacle when it comes to getting things done. It’s energy.

It wasn’t hard to figure this out in the painful hours sitting at my computer, desperately trying to stay awake even after a full night’s sleep. I just didn’t have much of anything to work with, and no way that I knew of to fully make it better. I was like an old battery that couldn’t hold a charge for long.

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World War II lasted from 1939 to 1945. Six long years.

On the one hand, I don’t know how they possibly could have done it. And on the other, I now know: One day at a time.

Today, if all goes according to plan, I will get my first dose of the coronavirus vaccine. It’s coming approximately a year after what I would have preferred, but I made it. And then, there are things to do. There’s a new baby in the family to meet. I have so many people I want to hug. And I’d like to visit my school, where I haven’t set foot in months. Next week, it will have students for the first time since March 13, 2020. Could this really be the end?

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I used to give out stickers to my music students for each piece of music they completed.

One little boy earned a few stickers in one day. “I wasted these ones,” he said, pointing to the empty spaces on the sheet where the stickers had been. I smiled at his subtle mistake. “Yes, you used them,” I said. What’s the point of stickers, anyway?

For her “virtual red carpet” appearance at the 2021 Screen Actors Guild Awards, Kerry Washington donned a stunning silk velvet gown embroidered with Swarovski crystals, plus a matching cap.

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Exactly a year ago, I was experiencing one of the most exhausting and demoralizing days of my life.

The pandemic hadn’t hit my area yet, though it had begun to cast its shadow over our futures. I had yet to wear a mask in public or hear about an outbreak in any of the communities I was part of.

No, I was engaged in a more conventional type of misery: preparing to sell a home.

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When I was a kid, I hung onto things. Candies, stickers, little soaps, fancy erasers and pencils, personalized stationery — instead of consuming them or using them up, I would hoard them and relish the perfection of their untouched, unblemished potential. More often than not, they’d be tossed or lost before I did anything with them.

It became the same with ideas. Rather than create the drawing, song, poem, story, or business offering, I would collect ideas for someday. And like my childhood collections, these would languish, unloved, in notebooks and on recordings until they were lost or forgotten.

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