Disclaimer: As far as the COVID pandemic goes, I am lucky. I’ve remained healthy, as have my loved ones. I’m able to work remotely from home, and I anticipate my job will be safe for a good while. As an introvert who shares a house with two cats, I don’t mind being alone. Still, my emotions are all over the map. A sampling, below, of my COVID moods:

Resolute: “We can do this. I am resilient.”

When I’m graced with this preferable mood, I don my facemask and gloves, wait patiently in line at the grocery store, and smile at my fellow shopping bandits. “It’s about time I learn what it’s like to be inconvenienced,” I think, reminding myself that most people on the planet live a life harder than mine. After reading Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See a few years ago, I was inspired to find more books detailing life in Europe during World War Two. Talk about resilience and sacrifice. Surely I can shelter in place with food, books, and Netflix.

Anxious: “What if?”

I’ve come to expect this unwanted mood will pop up regularly. The door to panic opens when the “what ifs” start squawking. What if the death toll continues to rise? What if my partner, a CRNA in a large hospital, catches the virus? What if for months to come, I won’t be allowed to visit my mother in her assisted living community? What if my side hustle income dries up? What if the university where I work remains closed for the fall semester? What if we’re barreling towards an economic depression? What if we’re barreling toward a compromised election in November? What if I can’t turn off the “what ifs”?

Exhausted: “I cannot look at a screen for one more minute.”

This mood usually arrives midweek after the pile-up of Zoom meetings and Face Time calls. Nausea creeps in as I stare at people talking to each other on my laptop; I watch the clock and cannot imagine how I can sit erectly for the remaining fifteen minutes of our meeting. I smile and nod and hope that I make sense. For the first time in my adult life, I take naps, both with and without intention. My pre-COVID sleep was never great; I’d usually awaken several times each night with no guarantee of returning to sleep before my alarm chimed. Now, I sleep deeply until dawn. And my dreams? Never have they been more active or peculiar.

Peaceful: “Just live in this moment.”

Peacefulness tends to show up when I’m out in nature. I’ve always been one for jaunts around my neighborhood or through one of Chapel Hill’s many trails and greenways. With spring now in bloom, walking is imperative as I seek the comforting signs of new life. I stoop down in strangers’ flowerbeds to examine the intricacies of an iris blossom. I look up into a towering magnolia to spot a trilling songbird. A little boy looking no older than five whizzes by on the smallest of two-wheelers, his expression is sheer joy. “He just learned to ride,” his mother proudly explains as she pedals after him. They disappear through the trail, but their happiness stays with me. Everything is okay.

Confused: “What day is it?”

I woke up one morning, prepared to start another Monday working from home. I lay in bed and mentally walked myself through the coming day while my cats purred beside me. In my kitchen, I got the coffee going and turned on NPR. And that’s when I learned that it was Sunday. Huh? Not once in my thirty years of working full-time have I ever mistaken a weekend for a weekday. But now, the usual markers that track time for me—the flow of appointments in my office, recurring staff meetings, and Sunday morning church services in 3D—are suspended. Without their standard anchors, my days bleed together, muddling my middle-aged-memory more than ever. Until some semblance of normalcy returns, I’ll likely continue to forget things. Like the day of the week.

Hopeful: “Something good will emerge from this crisis.”

When it seems the anxiety or exhaustion might pull me under, a flicker of hope appears. I don’t need to detail how the turn of the millennium has ushered in a steady stream of existential crises: the rapidly changing climate, the rise in poverty, and our disappearing democracy. Odd how already the impeachment trial seems so very long ago. Pre-COVID, I used to believe that if we, the current occupants of Earth, are to dig ourselves out of the mess we’ve made, we’d need a significant shakeup. A pandemic is not quite what I’d imagined, but when I’m hopeful, I wonder if we may look back on COVID and see it as a catalyst that shifted humanity for the better.