Alone Together: And Other Pandemic Lies

Remember the pandemic and what it was like to live through it.

For about two years, my blog had begun filling up mostly with posts about the pandemic. It was natural, because it was the biggest thing happening in my life and the lives of everyone around me.

I write about what I’m living and thinking about, so this is what happens. By the end of 2022, I’d pulled those posts together, along with artwork, and self-published it as a book. The book was released in December 2022.

It was probably not the Christmas gift anyone was looking for, but I was certain it would at least serve as a reminder to me and others of what it had been like to live through that experience. While it is mostly from my vantage point in North Dakota, many people in other locations would recognize, to some degree, the description of the pandemic where they lived. And, knowing how quickly we forget traumatic and monumental historical moments we live through—which I believe has happened to many regarding the pandemic—I saw it as a necessary, tangible reminder, a documentation, both written and visual, of what it was like to live through a global, insane pandemic.

I still have a few paperback copies left, filled with the full-color illustrations. One of the ways I preserved my sanity, as I discuss in the book’s introduction, was to create art to help process the highly illogical behavior that characterized the pandemic.

Each essay, poem, or art piece is available to subscribers of this Substack in the section dedicated to this book.