It's odd to think that exactly six months ago I had an email conversation to reschedule cancelled March/April meetings into September.
It was a Tuesday, St. Patrick's Day in fact, and I was consumed with responding to the COVID crisis as a UofT Fellow-at-Large. The Provincial State of Emergency was declared, we were moving students out, classes were online, my colleague had left the day before to return home on the last international flight back to her country, and anxieties were causing people to be tense with each other.
Maybe it was because of just how overwhelmed I was that I had to think life as we knew it would resume in a matter of months. Many of us did.
Today, the Ontario government announced the 2021 Canada Summer Games are postponed with the hope they will be held in 2022.
This is the first significant 2021 cancellation I've taken note of, and I expect there will be many more to follow.
It is challenging to accept that it will be a very long time before life resumes as it was prior to COVID. I've settled into some sembleance of a "new normal", but it will definitely hit me in December when Christmas parties are cancelled, and even more so in March when so many activities I love do not occur.
I'm slowly bringing myself to accept that I'll have to cancel my annual birthday party in March, which brings me together with all of my long-time personal friends. Thankfully, this year, it was held on the first weekend of March - just under the wire before the COVID closures began.