Is the pandemic a blip on the radar? Or will it have long-term lasting effects on the way we live? At a time when we can’t seem to agree on anything, it’s no surprise that we’re divided on predictions of how it will all pan out.

Half of Americans think our lives will change in major ways and half think things will return to normal, according to Pew Research Center. Race, age, political affiliation, income, gender, and where we live changes our belief in whether or not life will be different for us after the pandemic:

• 57% of younger adults, age 18 to 29 say it will, compared to 51% of those ages 30 to 49, half of those ages 50 to 64 and 47% of those 65 and older. …

Did you know it has been 20 years since the decade of the brain? The Decade of the Brain, from 1990–1999, was an initiative by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health “to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research.”

During this decade and since, understanding of the brain advanced. Before, we thought that the adult brain stopped growing and changing after its initial development. …

I started reading The Opposite of Certainty, a memoir by Janine Urbaniak Reid, because it’s another story about someone with a brain tumor. This time it was the author’s young son. I’m an astrocytoma survivor and I think I’ve read every book there is on brain tumors trying to find myself in the story. Even as I tried, I never quite found the same story, until now.

Maybe the person I read about didn’t really have a brain tumor, but had cancer instead. Or maybe they had a stroke, like my dad, who acted like a different person after his brain bled and gave me insight into what my life might have been like for me had the doctors not been so skillful when removing my tumor. …

As a writer, words are important to me. I usually write quickly, but still choose my words carefully. When I type, my cursor usually doesn’t just go one way. It goes forward and backward as I write and rewrite, making sure to choose the words I really want to say. When I choose the wrong word, I pick another one.

In the wake of the uprisings following George Floyd’s death, words matter more than ever. A group of artists are showing that now in an area hit by destruction.

Just as the pandemic was beginning in February, my husband and I traveled to Laos and Cambodia. It seems like a lifetime ago now when there was so much uncertainty. As we talked to local drivers and tour guides, they talked about this potential threat. As a driver took us to the airport through the teeming streets of Siem Reap, Cambodia, to the outskirts where it seemed the hotels just stopped, he spoke about what it could do to his livelihood if tourism was affected.

Speech class was part of my high school curriculum. Our teacher made her grading system clear. I don’t remember how speeches were graded, though probably some mix of content and performance. What sticks in my mind after all these years, were the consequences for not preparing your speech. If you missed a speech, you received 20 zeroes.

I remember the teacher standing in front of the class reiterating this fact, “You will receive 20 zeroes,” in a perfectly enunciated speech. …

I finished reading Theft by Finding by David Sedaris recently. This book of the famous writer’s diary entries from 1977–2002, was exactly what my brain could handle during coronavirus isolation time. I didn’t have to carry plot along with me from page to page. If I grew tired of reading, I could quit in the middle of page. Also, since I’m not writing much, reading the diary of a famous writer during the quarantine is perfect since it reminds me of all the things I can’t write, right now and how famous writers struggle sometimes too.

I have read most of Sedaris’ work, which features his family and boyfriend, so I knew most of the recurring characters appearing in his diary and didn’t have to get to know a new cast. Plus, as a humorist who is known to plumb his everyday life for the subject matter of his essays, his entries were often quite funny in that wry and peculiar way he often writes. That was especially needed during this time when the news can be quite bleak. …

I figured out what my brain is like right now. It is like a rock on the banks of a fast-running stream. Leaves, twigs, branches, logs, even fish and birds pass by, but I have no way of catching them. So, I don’t go anywhere, but still I race after them. It is exhausting to go nowhere, but still be scurrying.

When you are learning mindfulness, there is an exercise where you imagine yourself sitting by a peaceful stream. As thoughts come up, you imagine them as leaves floating by. …