Count Your Corona Blessings

When Michigan State announced it was moving everything online and shutting down campus, I was shocked in a way I hadn’t expected. I knew, intellectually, that things were changing. But watching it actually happen — facilities closing, campus emptying — was something else.

I want to be clear that my experience was mild. I didn’t lose a job, and I didn’t lose anyone. But I did lose control, and that hit me harder than I expected. I’m someone who runs on schedules and plans. The unpredictability of the pandemic left me anxious in a low-grade, constant way that was hard to shake.

What shifted my perspective was a church video — members answering the question: What would you have missed without coronavirus? Kids talked about pancake breakfasts and blanket forts. Adults talked about time with their families. Something about that simplicity stopped me.

So I started looking for my own version of that list.

I built this website. Before the pandemic, programming felt like work. Somewhere in the weeks of quarantine, I rediscovered that I actually love it — the problem-solving, the building, the way HTML and JavaScript and CSS click together. This site exists because I finally had time to make it.

I actually talked to my family. I went from occasional check-ins to daily FaceTime calls. We had conversations I don’t think we would have had otherwise — real ones, about things that mattered. That surprised me.

I made peace with what I can’t control. I lost an internship. I was upset about it. And then I had to sit with the fact that some things are just outside my control, and that’s okay. I made a plan for the summer: part-time work, golf, gardening, time. It turned out to be enough.

The harm of the pandemic is real and should not be minimized. But for the sake of your mental health, it’s worth actively looking for the unexpected gifts — the ones that only showed up because everything else got cancelled.