Love those marsupials. I remember them well. It was 2016 and I was on Kangaroo Island, a 96 sliver of land plopped down in the Indian Ocean 70 miles south of Adelaide, Australia. It’s one of the largest nature preserves in the continent with hundreds of kangaroos, echidnas, possums, and wallabies sharing the habitat with 4500 permanent farmers, tourism operators and service personnel.

Barely 21 and fresh out of art school with a degree in painting (the Rembrandt van Rijn kind not the Benjamin Moore kind) I faced the daunting prospect of finding employment in my mid-sized, midwest, hometown. There wasn’t much call for a fine artist at the time (and yes I should have thought about that four years earlier) so I opted for convention. I would get a job in an arts related field that at least paid me a living wage.

I like people. I really do. Preferably in small doses but summertime pushes the limit and stretches my patience. My summers start innocently enough. I love waking up to the sunshine streaming through the curtains in the early morning. What a great way to start the day, so life-affirming. I put on my happy face and swap my trousers for shorts and dart around the city half-naked like the rest of humanity.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my kids, two self-confident twenty-something women who recently left the nest to build meaningful lives for themselves. Naturally, as parents, we’re concerned about their welfare, moreso in these trying times. My wife and I are television writers. We still have jobs. TV and movie production has stalled but the show must go on and Mom and Dad are writing content for the day shooting resumes and we’re back to normal. Our older daughter is also working, self-isolating in her apartment.