One year ago today, end of February 2020, I was at a major sporting event, the Canadian Men’s Curling Championships, the Brier, in Kingston, Ontario. My husband and I spent the weekend sitting in crowds, eating in restaurants, drinking and dancing to live bands in “the Patch”, the party tent outside the arena. Living our retirement years to the fullest we had planned for and imagined, (and that our old bones could handle.)
Well, I don’t need to tell you what happened next.
This past year living in a world-wide pandemic has not been fun. It hasn’t even been bearable most of the time. It was something no one I knew had ever planned to live through. But here we are, one year later. Not all of us made it, but many of us did. And for this one army brat, retired military spouse and former IT consultant turned author and blogger, it became a lesson in adaptability and resilience.
I started to blog about the months of the pandemic. Blogging, I explain to my elderly parents, is like keeping a diary, but one that you let everyone else, even strangers, read. They think that’s a little strange. But then I tell them that I will turn the blogs into a book, to market and sell in stores, and then they say, ah, a book, that’s different, OK.
So reveal time: I did it. I took the Covid Diaries I’ve been blogging over the past year, and added more life stories of how growing up a military daughter, wife, and mother really did prepare me for the twists of fate, like this pandemic that is ending its Year One right now.
Yes, a new book by yours truly, Michele Sabad, is going to the editor in March. To be published by May. Ready for sales online and in bookstores and at signings as soon as I can. Title? The working title was always “the Covid Diaries”, but I didn’t want to give that disease any credit, so the real title (unless my editor talks me out of it, editors do things like that) is “Lost Year A Pandemic Diary 2020” Watch for updates and availability soon.
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Stevie Szabad, Author 
Congratulations!