I got back to the mystery project yesterday, staring a round of revision, during which I hope to come up with a plot for the next book and an idea for series titles.

You’d think I’d have more time to write right now, but I seem to be being more social during lockdown than I usually am. My parents and friends are checking in on me, so I’m talking on the phone a lot more. Then there are video meetings and livestreams. People are putting concerts and shows online. Our local PBS station is doing educational programming for various levels of school during the day, and their “high school” programs are the kinds of things I like to watch, with history documentaries and literary adaptation movies.

As a result, it takes a lot of willpower to get to work when there are so many distractions.

Not to mention, cute animal videos. I love the videos of penguins getting tours of their aquariums while there are no visitors. I think in my next career I’m going to be a penguin wrangler. Or there’s the orangutan playing with the otters, or the one who’s now washing her hands a lot after seeing her keepers washing their hands more often. And there’s the bear who set the fallen traffic cone upright. And the mountain goats who are invading the Welsh town now that there are fewer people around (the version with the video edited to “Ride of the Valkyries” is classic).

In real life, I just have squirrels, lizards, and the Canada geese who seem to have decided to stick around in my neighborhood. Most of them are gone, but there’s this one pair that’s hanging out with a mallard family. If I hear them honking, it makes me think of fall, and then I remember what time of year it is.

This is shaping up to be a really weird year (and I imagine that’s the understatement of the century).