RYAN STACY

In the Before Times, shaking the hand of a Nashville artisan or shop owner was as natural as the timber floorboards we stood on. The size of my appetite and thickness of my wallet were my only restrictions on a night out at one of Brown County’s many great places to eat and drink. Enjoying a local park or live musical event meant being among people—mingling, laughing, sweating people, lots of them. And talking with folks in the community for Our Brown County assignments meant just that: talking with them, being where they were, taking in the smells of their workshop or studio, seeing their eyes focus close on me.

Ah, yes. The Before Times.

The Friday before Saint Patrick’s Day, I got the news at my day job: due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the public library where I work would be closing down until further notice. Like millions of other Americans that weekend, I suddenly had some time on my compulsively-scrubbed hands. I didn’t know how long my family and I would be at home, waiting for life to return to normal, but I promised myself one thing: this was not going to be time wasted.

I’ve spent half my life lamenting that I “don’t have time” to do the things I want to do, and now I had plenty of that missing ingredient. But I knew that if I didn’t make a conscious effort otherwise, the time I now had would be wasted on napping and Netflix. (Okay, I may have done just a bit of those over the past weeks too.) Anyhow, I figured I already had two advantages when it came to enforced isolation: I’m an introvert, and I’m super nerdy.

To keep my mind and my body from going to mush, I’ve carved out some time every day to exercise them both. Our new puppy has been faithful in keeping us active, making sure we get our daily walks in, and my wife has even coaxed me into joining her for a few calisthenics. Between my own books and the great free e-lending my public library offers, I’ve also focused on some blind spots in my learning (I’m shamefully ignorant of Africa’s nations and peoples, for instance, and I’m catching up on the classic literature I pretend to have already read). I’ve even managed to find a couple of free online courses that have been keeping me busy.

The slowing down of daily life allowed me to pay better attention to the space around me. Now that I had time to cook, I could make dishes from scratch, using the tools and ingredients I already had, without feeling rushed or extravagant. Checking off a few long overdue to-dos by tackling some minor fixes around the house was more satisfying than I expected. And now I could actually listen to the hundreds of hours of music I’d collected for years, enjoying the re-discovery of such a simple pleasure. I even went through the crates and boxes of junk I’ve somehow accumulated over decades past—turns out I didn’t want a lot of what I was in them.

I’ve also made time to pursue creative interests, old and new. Paper pop-ups have always fascinated me, so learning some new cuts and folds has been a lot of fun. My sketchbooks are filling up with drawings again. And although I can’t pursue photography outside like I used to, I’ve found a great new alternative for using my camera: a makeshift stop-motion animation setup in my basement.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I picked a good year to try my hand at growing vegetables in straw bales. Normally, watching my plant seedlings sprout indoors each year, while pleasant, is pretty routine. But something about nurturing beautiful organisms, envisioning what they would become later in the season, was extra meaningful during lockdown. Getting my bales conditioned through a fertilizingand-watering process in the weeks leading up to planting day was also a welcome exercise in patience and reward: they’re doing great now, and I’m laying in my plants and seeds with lots of optimism for a good summer harvest.

I could say my wife and I are “lucky” or “fortunate” to be able to weather the current crisis without too much worry. Instead I’ll call it what it is: we’re privileged enough to have jobs that allow us to work from home, and to have the resources to be flexible in our response to the pandemic. A quick look around makes it clear that not everybody enjoys the same privilege, so in a time of need, it won’t cut it for us to neglect the community that’s been so good to us. We’re digging a little deeper into our pockets to support the local businesses that remain open these days, and checking in on our more vulnerable friends and neighbors. We’ve also tapped into the efforts of some of the community groups mobilized to get necessities where they need to go, volunteering our time and money as we’re able. (I’ll take this opportunity to give a big thanks to our grocery and health care workers, our delivery drivers, our public servants, and everybody else who has kept our community going at their own personal risk.)

This pandemic has changed the world around us, maybe forever. I still don’t know when Nashville’s shops will be filled with locals and visitors again, or when the lights will come up onstage at the Brown County Music Center, or when we’ll pass each other at the State Park with close-up with smiles, rather than careful glances from a safe distance. But when that happens at last, I’d like to think we’ll be more appreciative of what and who’s around us, and more intentional about how we spend our time and energy each day. And while I’d never say I’m glad a public health crisis disrupted our lives in such a dramatic way, I’m grateful for the lessons it’s taught me about what’s important and what’s merely a distraction. See you when we’re up and running again!