I missed a couple of days. I didn’t intentionally do so, I just forgot. This tells me that I need to develop a set time of day that I write. I don’t like hemming myself in like that, but it’s be best way to develop a habit.

Missed days aside, just making myself write has shown me that I do have things to say, they just don’t develop until I am looking at the blank page. So, regardless of my failure, I’ve learned what I set out to. Which is that waiting for inspiration is a recipe for not writing. I will call this exercise a success, and I am only 5 days in.

In line with creative topics, I wonder when we will see live performances in-person. Large gatherings might not happen until some level of immunity has been achieved, and that looks to be a very long way off. If I had to guess these events won’t come back until late 2021 at earliest. I sincerely hope I am wrong.

I keep thinking about performers, theaters, and music venues, and how they might survive until events can proceed safely. Those folks will likely find other jobs. Maybe they will deliver food. Maybe they will take up a customer service job. When they have the opportunity to, will they go back to their pre-COVID-19 work? Will their skills atrophy without exercise?

And what about kids thinking about pursuing the arts now? All the teens who would have tried out for the school play? Are they as motivated when they won’t feel thrill of being on stage in front of a packed room of people? Are they missing critical early experiences that will fuel their resolve to soldier through the very difficult career path in the arts?

Five years from now, will there be a proliferation in Instagram influencers and YouTube stars, but a lack of young people moving to New York to make it on Broadway? Are local music scenes dying a slow death right now, as venues slowly and quietly have turned out the lights for the last time? Are local kids without places to play gathering their virtual following, a following that will remain so after we can be with each other?

I worry that a certain amount of virtualization that’s been necessary in the time of COVID-19 will continue long after the fact. And in a moment where we are hating each other politically, we desperately need other things to bring us together. We need to stand next to each other and cheer for sport ball. We need to cry shoulder to shoulder when “Do You Hear The People Sing” starts in the finale of Les Mis. We need to sing and dance together to our favorite songs. And I’m worried that some of these things will be lost to us long after COVID-19 is gone, and no comment section on YouTube can replace them.