Hindsight is 2020.

 

“Fifteen, there's still time for you

Time to buy and time to lose

Fifteen, there's never a wish better than this

When you only got a hundred years to live.”

Unless you have been out in space, out at sea, or in a hole for the last 366 days (last year was a leap year) you may want to sit down and get ready for this story, it’s truly unbelievable.

There are people who ask, “Where were you when 9/11 happened? When Kennedy was shot?” Now the question will be…”Where were you when you knew the pandemic was real?” I will look back on these times and realize we were put into a place that we were ill prepared to be in, and I hope we take any precautions seriously should it happen again.

The last day of normalcy was a Thursday and I remember walking to work thinking about the “Coronavirus” and the joke that had been going around claiming Corona Beer was the culprit of it all. When I entered the office I knew something was truly wrong. We had emails from our corporate office, very few of my associates had come into the office, and we all kind of realized we would be out of the office for at least 2 weeks. It was like a bomb had dropped. Had we known it would be more than 52 weeks, we would never have believed it—I was in the office about 4 months later and it was the “Twilight Zone.” Nothing had moved. Nothing.

But things are changing, we are coming out of the darkness and I am so grateful to be on the other side; I was hopeful it would happen sooner, but there were many times I was not sure when it was going to happen if ever.

Today, we received the first emails about a football game on Saturday for our local high school. It was apparent by the response of myself and another photographer about how badly we wanted to get back on the field. This is a practice game and he kindly said, “Why don’t you do it?” The funny part, I was prepared to say the same to him. We’ve been communicating this afternoon and I asked for one favor…”since we will know the weather report prior to a game, if we know it’s going to rain, please let me be the photographer that game.” There is something about a mud game that is addicting. He wrote back and said, “Mark, ‘mud’ is your middle name.”

One year later, let’s look back and count our blessings we made it and let’s look back at those who didn’t and send our blessings to their family…it’s been one hell of a ride.

The photo above was taken less than a week before the pandemic shut down the world. I took it for a mailing to the state of Arizona (they were a client of mine) and never did I  think this would be the last time I would be there…now that I have had a chance to look in the mirror, I want to go back. As soon as I get my shot.

Thanks for stopping by.