I walked into work one day…

and my manager told me to prepare for working from home. I checked in, packed up my stuff and was sent home without a return date. One year later, our office is still working from home and thriving.
— MONICA

I had just finished a three week tour…

visiting family and friends in the U.S. I had the honor of seeing friends get married and that that was the last gathering for me. I got on a plane to head back to Berlin, and when I arrived the full lock down started. I was just getting my life started here in Berlin, and was really scared being so far away from all my friends and family. I cried for hours, sinking into this weird and mysterious reality.
— HALLEY

I had just returned home from a trip …

to Vermont with my partner, where I attended the graduation ceremony for my psychology/expressive arts masters degree. I remember asking a professor if she was still planning her trip to China. Her answer was yes, but perhaps she’d have to wait now? Who knows? The week we got back my sister was planning to quit her job and move in with us. The next few days were a blur of increasing cases, unpacking from the trip, going to Knoxville to help her move, getting a puppy, and the moment the before the dust would settle, we were in lockdown. Just like that.
— ELIZA

It was Friday, March 13th…

Spring break was starting. I got the call that students would not be returning to school for two weeks after Spring Break that evening. Little did I know, almost a year later, students are still not on campus. School as we know it has been drastically changed.

March 16th…

my kids school was still open but a friend and I were to scared to send our kindergartens. That is when it hit me & I was scared.
— TIFFANY

I was at home alone…

and my partner was in the Grand Canyon when our work sent us home to quarantine “as a precaution.” This was 2 weeks before the California shelter in place began.
— ASHLEY

Hanging in PDX…

scheduled to meet up with my bro and his gf (who were in SoCal visiting from Scotland) at my moms house (where my gramps also lives) within a day or two. Ended up on group phone calls deciding what to do. Once the EU travel ban was instated they decided to head to the airport for fear of getting stuck if the ban extended to the UK, so I cancelled my trip as well (the night before my flight).

— CHRISTY

When I lost my job…

and the whole city shut down. It was pretty surreal.
— JEN

When SXSW cancelled…

and I lost $15K on March 6th.
— LISA

I was at work…

which is my family’s building supply store. I’m in management and we had to decide what to do for our high risk employees and try to decide if we were an essential business. Literally threw us into a state of panic of what to do. We sent home all high risk employees and determined we were indeed essential.
— MORGAN

I just had a sense like it was this tidal wave…

that was going to roll over everything. So I went out and prepared. I got a shit load of books and movies from the local library and a bunch of edibles. Two days later, everything, including my work, shut down and I was glad I'd prepared, but I wish I'd bought more toilet paper. The full scope of it, the realization that this was a paradigm shift in our civilization didn't hit me until May though. That's when I started to prepare for the long haul.
— DREW

I went backpacking for a long weekend in March…

—left with a vague idea that there was something on. We got out of the woods and drove 4 hours back home that evening before realizing the world was in terror. My long-distance partner was with me and we were supposed to spend the upcoming week together, but there were rumors circulating that state borders might close and the government would shut down roads and he was a 10 hour drive from home. He was worried everything would collapse during his drive if he waited too long to leave. We went to bed terrified, crying, holding one another. He left the next morning at 5am, leaving me alone in apartment with no idea when/if we would see one another again. My mom called me a few hours later to pack an “emergency bag” and to put gas in my car in case I needed to leave, too. I didn’t see my partner again for over 6 months.
— JULIA

It was earlier on when it started showing up in the hospitals…

Like 2 weeks before places started shutting down. My mom works in ICU. She and my dad came to visit us in Pacific Grove, and it hit that it would be the last time I saw her for a while because she was exposed to the virus every day, and my kids were considered high risk for asthma. I took a lot of pictures of my kids with my parents that day. I didn’t see her or my dad for over 4 months, the longest I had ever gone without actually hugging my parents.
- ALISHA

We were on vacation…

in Buenos Aires. When we left Amsterdam where we live there was not much information about covid either in Holland nor Argentina. Our return and flight back to Amsterdam was uncertain but we made it in steps. The day we arrived at home our prime minister declared a lockdown for The Netherlands.
— ANS

A month into what was supposed to be an endless roadtrip…

Specifically, we were visiting family in Reno when the county closed all schools, and that’s when we knew we had to go straight home.
— HALEY

It was real when they told me I'd have to labor and deliver my baby in a mask.…

It was real when I realized that my mom would likely not see me pregnant. It was real when her health faded and we risked traveling 9 hours in a car to see her with a 2 month old because I had a bad feeling. It was real when she passed away 2 weeks ago due to isolation and loneliness. It's been real.
— ABBY

My wife, little girl and I were returning from a weekend away…

from Portland in Astoria; the news sounded more & more dire, but when we pulled into Tillamook Cheese to an empty parking lot....whoa.
—PETE

My partner and I went out to eat…

The restaurant was close to empty, so we could hear everyone's conversations and not a single group wasn't talking about the pandemic. We went to the grocery store afterward to buy some extra frozen and canned food because we heard there might be a quarantine and thought that meant that even grocery stores and takeout would be closed. It didn't seem believable that something that drastic would happen, so we didn't go bonkers with our groceries (although we were out of toilet paper and I happened to get a huge thing of it without even realizing that 2 weeks later it would be a coveted item). The guy in front of us was bought $700 worth of canned soup. It wasn't until I was in a meeting at work and they announced that the NBA had cancelled its games that I realized how real and close this was to affecting us. I don't give any shits whatsoever about basketball, but I know how much Americans love it and how much of a cash cow it is - so I knew that it had to be serious for them to cancel games. A few days later we were told that we'd be working from home for a bit. I gathered stuff from my desk with the thought that I'd be back in 2-3 weeks. I just went back for the first time last week and looked inside my water bottle that is left on my desk...there were bugs in it that crawled in and drowned in the quarter inch of water. A year later and I've just accepted that quarantine life is the new norm, but I yearn for the days to come when I can gather in groups with my friends again.
— TRUXTAL

On Saturday March 14th 2020…

I played two live music shows and particularly one of them (a private 50th birthday event) was almost cancelled but instead they went through with it and about half the expected guests showed up. It started feeling real then and fully settled in with the announcement of indoor dining shutting down in NYC the next day.
— NINA

Sitting in the truck…

having to make a decision to cancel my birthday get together with friends.
— STACY

I don't think where I live in Qld Australia it feels as though we have been hit…

I work in an ED and we wore all the PPE for a couple of weeks but no cases and our lock down was like 3 weeks but it wasn't really a lock down we could still do most things. For us here all the COVID safe measures are in place but it feels unreal as to why when we have only had a handful of cases in the whole time and they were in quarantine.
— MELINDA

March 13, 2020…

when we got the email that shoots would be closed for 2 weeks. But I guess it was worse after the two weeks were over and we still didn’t go back
— CASSIE

I went home from school on a Thursday. …

My district had decided to make the following Monday (my birthday) a teacher work day to talk about what we would do if we had to switch virtual temporarily.

We never went back to the building. I start back next week. On my birthday.
— ADDIE