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Real talk. Before COVID, conventions were my my biggest source of income. Easily. By sheer luck my VO resume made me a staple on the con circuit and over the last few years I’d come to rely on that to pay the bills. So, yeah: I’m as desperate as anyone for normal to come back.
But here’s the thing: it hasn’t. And the more we try to pretend it has, the worse our new normal becomes.
We’re all crawling up the walls for a throwback to pre-pandemic life. To a lot of us it means the first glimmer of anything like financial security in almost a year. Boy, does it ever. But that glimmer is not, and never will be, worth risking a SINGLE HUMAN LIFE.
Please see that. Please see the many, many lives at risk from even ONE person in denial, and be strong. Not the “COVID doesn’t scare me” kind of strong. The difficult kind of strong. The strong that waits. The strong that bolsters the health and well being of total strangers.
Be the kind of strong that choses, in spite of itself, NOT to attend in-person cons until this mess is well and truly over.
For what it’s worth, strength doesn’t come easily to me. These last eight months have been a white-knuckle crash course in anxiety management. If a schlub like me can find the strength I’m talking about, odds are you’ll find it, no problem.
This godforsaken pandemic and the world it’s created has taken a toll on everyone - emotionally, spiritually, financially. We won’t be the same after this. There’s no going back. We’ve learned too much about ourselves. Too much about each other.
But the strength it’ll take to weather this nightmare, if we find it, won’t fade once the dust has settled. It’ll be ours forever. We’ll carry it with us into better times. And if that strength can move mountains in a pandemic, IMAGINE what it can accomplish in the aftermath.
