Living with our new “normal”

I thought long and hard trying to come up with a topic to write about that wasn’t related to the Coronavirus, however, it was all I could really come up with. I guess that isn’t too surprising, as civilization across the globe are adjusting to a new “normal” these days.
Our older people and others considered high risk are self isolating at home and more and more cities and states are mandating for their citizens to remain at home other then for “essential activities.” Offices, including ours, are closing to the public and children are now home for what appears to be an indefinite amount of time. Parents are having to decide how they are not only going to have childcare, but also how they are going to make sure, their children are able to keep up with their school work once online learning goes live in our district after this extended Spring Break. Our restaurants are turning to pick up and delivery services and this will affect our service industry workers. No one’s lives are going untouched by this pandemic.
Times are scary for our children, for those at high risk and for all of us who are trying to make a living to pay our bills. Trust me I’m worried on so many levels. I’m worried as a working mother, I’m worried as someone who has older family members who mean the world to me and I’m worried as the editor of your local news source. I’m trying my hardest to keep our readers up-to-date on everything going on and trust me it changes by the second. As soon as I get something placed on our website or mark it as something for the next issue, along comes a new twist or turn that renders it behind the times. It is seriously hard to keep up with it all.
Then there is the fact that I feel the need to try and bring our community news that isn’t purely COVID-19 related, but that is getting more difficult every second. All of our normal activities and events are shutting down. News related to something else is getting really hard to come by. I do plan to reach out to the community the rest of this week through phone calls and maybe even some Q&A sessions with our followers on Facebook in hopes of finding things to lighten everyone’s spirits as we face the unknown.
The one piece of comfort I have been able to find in all of this, and I hope you do as well, is our community coming together as it always does and these are the stories I’m hoping to share. To those of you who are reaching out to help provide meals to our children and to our elderly or are helping to provide other essentials or are just doing your part to help brighten the days of others, thank you.