In March came the quarantine. Homebound under the governor’s orders, my only escape was an Apple orchard of electronics – MacBook. iPhone. iPad. – my world flattened to screens. I was now a college professor whose domain had shrunken from a classroom to a Zoom URL, students admiring the lush wall of plants in my living room. As a single-unwed-childless-petless woman with no roommates, I found my social life relocated fully to social media.
By April, my digital ennui ran deep, but I could find no suitable tech-free distraction to float through the hours confined at home. I made daily attempts at improving my read-to-unread book ratio, but my anxious mind insisted on drifting from the page. Often, my attention broke mid-paragraph and I’d be back online checking for breaking news of a Covid cure that wasn’t coming anytime soon, or peering at posts made by friends I used to spend quality time with IRL.
During the smallest of small talk in my Instagram DMs with a poet friend, I casually mentioned I’d been considering getting back into collage, but I didn’t know where to…
