There are countless ways this “New normal” has and will change our lives going forward. Around the house we’ve been saying, “We can’t go back to March 12th overnight.” The day after March 12th was Friday the 13th, the same day I packed up my computer to start working from home. March 12th seems to be the marker in time that represents living in the “before times.” Before the pandemic was right at our feet, before the shelter-in-place orders, and before everything in our lives changed.
What seems to be making this transition so hard is that we know the path we would’ve been on. Life is all about choices and you can think back to decisions in your life when you could’ve zigged instead of zagged. Right now on the other hand, life was zagged for us. So much of our plans were predetermined and schedules months and years in advance. Almost every weekend its been easy to think of where we could’ve been and what we were supposed to be doing.
Last weekend we should have been up in Traverse City Michigan at the Gran Traverse Resort attending Cherry Capital Comic Con (C4) for our 9th straight year. Over the years May has been a very important time for me personally and for the comic. Free Comic Book Day is the first Saturday in May, Motor City Comic Con is in the middle of the month and, C4 is over Memorial Weekend. If you’ve been with the comic for any length of time then you’ve probably heard me talk about how much I love C4.
Last Thursday instead of driving up to C4 Dana and I were finishing up our yoga session (which we’ve taken too over the last couple months) and it hit me how different our life is right now. There are all these previous plans now canceled so its easy to play the “what should have been” game. And although I was bumming about all the the things we haven’t been able to do I started to think about all the new things we started to do. We’ve been doing yoga, walking each day, connecting with friends through the internet, and getting to all the projects that time previously didn’t allow for. I’m not saying one time line is better than another because if I could snap my fingers and have the past few months be a dream I would. But, I am happy with all the new changes we’ve made in our lives and we definitely took lemons and made lemonade.
Since late 2017 my brother (Ray) and I have been working on a podcast together. Not really having a plan we just started to record ourselves talking about hobbies and things we are into. After a few months of recording we finally had a name, Scattered Cast, and from there we started to refine our style. One of the things that changed with the COVID pandemic is my home office situation. Our house computer is now in the living room being used for conference calls with family and friends, while our at-home personal office is now my work office. I was literally in the process of getting the podcast off the ground when the change happened. I couldn’t easy get to our older content to edit episodes and Ray and I really wanted to produce content so, just like everything else in our lives there was a dramatic shift in Scattered Cast. We’re starting to do video episodes and making our content small in size. Free Comic Book Day was cancelled at the beginning of May and instead of being bummed (which I was) and doing nothing I found and old episode of Scattered Cast and put this video together. This a great way to remember the good old days, share some funny stories, and give a preview of whats to come with Scattered Cast. I hope you enjoy it.