Two years ago when I was making homemade face masks for my friends and stocking up on hand sanitizer and figuring out how to order groceries online, it was with the assumption–shared with most of us, I think–that it was a temporary situation. After a few documentary-style entries in my journal and a couple of new hobbies acquired or languages learned on Duolingo it would surely fade into a topic we’d discuss one day with the grandkids as a strange anomaly.

But my plans to keep posting uplifting and entertaining things on Instagram tapered off a lot as I became bogged down with keeping my son from failing high school and figuring out how to spend 24/7 with he and my husband, who began working remotely just down the hall from my office. I discovered that I am not the extrovert I thought I was, and actually valued my time alone a lot more than I realized. But of course, I didn’t have any anymore. Oh, and my husband and I also entered couples counseling in March 2020. <insert maniacal laughter here> The universe has a phenomenal sense of humor, right?

Things got weird. And hard.

I haven’t kept my kitchen clean, and the garden in the backyard is a mess, but I am still married, the teenager is on track to be a senior next fall (in the classroom again thank god!), and somehow I’ve managed to dedicate myself to writing like I hadn’t done since I graduated from my BA program in 2007. Some of it had to do with feeling like I finally had permission from my family to do it, and some of it was about me giving mySELF permission. But also, being forced to find community online was a massive piece of the puzzle.

Sometime in the summer of 2020, I found a flash fiction workshop advertised on Twitter. I didn’t know the instructor or his work at the time, but I knew flash fiction was typically stories <1000 words, and the workshop would be taught online so I thought it would be a great thing to spend some time doing without a huge commitment or opportunity to screw it up. Mostly, I thought it would give me an excuse to sit down and write. In that workshop I met generous writers and followed them on Twitter. Through those connections I discovered other workshops, and a couple of online conferences. As the months passed, one of the worst social and political periods I’ve lived through presented opportunity after opportunity to learn, commune, and send my words out into the world that I would never have had if I wasn’t spending time trying to connect with people on the internet.

Two years later, I have been published in many online journals and a few anthologies, won an award for my writing, and just found out this week that my prize-winning story will be included in Sonder Press’s Best Small Fictions 2022. Crazy.

I have to admit, it has crossed my mind that the last couple of years could have been my peak. Because of course it has. (Hello, self-doubt, you sneaky bitch!) But I guess it’s up to me whether that will be the case or not. I’ve also been submitting and publishing my collage art, including creating a couple of book covers. I always loved art, but that was my brother’s “thing” when we were young, so I didn’t really pursue it, opting to fall in love with theater instead. But you know, life happened. So I’m 56 and finally digging into my passions and being recognized for my talent. George Eliot’s quote has been my mantra for years, “It’s never too late to be who you might have been.” It feels pretty perfect right now.