I am speaking from a place of immense privilege right now, and I’m well aware of it. Both of us are still working, we have money, we have food, we both still feel okay, and the relative who was ill with COVID-19 is now home and recovering. So lots of blessings there, and I’m grateful for each and every one of them.

Thing is, since I know how privileged I am, I’ve been pushing myself maybe a wee bit more than I should as a thank-you to Fate. For the last two weeks my average weekday has followed this pattern: wake up, feed the cats, do the WFH gig, do housework, make masks, make dinner, make more masks, fall into bed. My weekends have been: wake up, feed the cats, do a bunch more housework, make a bunch more masks, make dinner, maybe watch a couple of episodes of whatever on TV, fall into bed. Lots of masks made and sent off to people, lots of things cleaned around here, lots of work done for the day job … not a lot of down time for Nicola.

Today was similar — got up, fed the cats, attended the weekly company meeting then got to work, spent my lunch break making two more masks, worked through the afternoon, got the print proof of Breaker Zone and realized I needed to change something on the back cover for that and Storm Season, made the changes and uploaded them to Amazon, made an update to a client’s website, started a load of laundry, critted a friend’s poem, ate dinner that Ramón blessedly brought home, then suited up and went out to mail masks and do the weekly food stock-up (store was almost empty, got pretty much everything I needed apart from TP, nobody came within six feet of me, it was all good).

Part of my brain is saying, “Well, hey, don’t be a slacker. You still have over an hour before you need to go to bed — you can work on Shadow.” The other part of my brain is saying, “If you do anything other than make yourself a rum and coke and watch something soothing on Netflix, I swear to God I will blow an artery.” I want to write, I honestly do. But I’m so freaking exhausted that the idea of doing one more iota of work today is … no. Just no. Maybe I’ll have time tomorrow, and more energy.