COVID Diaries
Eleven short essays kept in data through the first weeks of the pandemic — quantified self, social networks, text, music, a graduation watched over Zoom. Most were prompted by Aisling Quigley's Data Storytelling class at Macalester; a few I just needed to write.
Written retroactively — the diary really began in week three, so this one goes back and fills in the start.
The first week of Zoom classes, and the first week I actually touch the homework I had been ignoring.
Start of week four, and things still are not consistent. A look at what changed, and what did not.
My usual social networks are all out of whack right now — mapping the new, smaller shape of them.
The class is asked to sit with data privacy, by way of the New York Times. So I sat with it.
Taking the reflections I had written since remote classes began, and reading them back through code.
I hate clutter but I like stuff, and I am bad at getting rid of stuff. A quarantine reckoning.
Late, and posted in the middle of week nine, for reasons I find perfectly valid and you may not.
Logging onto Zoom to watch my own virtual graduation, in the dystopian fashion of 2020.
To keep from going insane I have been walking a lot — masked, careful — and counting who else is.
Before you read this: mine is not the voice you should prioritize. Written the week of his murder.