It was mid-March, and I was told my kids’ school will close for at least three weeks (yeah, right). My wife and I packed the car with food, toys, laptops and a few other essentials. We drove to my mother-in-law’s house, where there’s at least some space to run around. Between nervous walks and attempts at playing amateur epidemiologist, I hid out in a closet, on phone calls with my publisher, trying to salvage the book that I had been working on for two and a half years, due out in late April.
At that point, everything was unknown. Book tour events and talks were being canceled, but would they ever be rescheduled? Would the printer be able to print the books? Would the warehouse be able to ship them? And if so, to who? My speaking agency, which arranges the talks that account for more than half of my annual income, sent out a letter essentially saying, “Hang tight; we are in uncharted waters.” I gazed at the money in my bank account. Each morning I woke up and felt a growing tightness in the center of my chest. I called my doctor to see if I should get a COVID-19 test. “What you’re describing is stress,” he said, reassuring me that I have no other symptoms. “You need to breathe.”
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