I was on spring break from teaching taiji when the governor’s “stay at home” order was issued, and my friends and I had already started social distancing on our own. So for the past week I’ve just carried on as I’d been doing the week before.

But now my spring break is over. Two weeks ago, I thought I’d be going back to the Savoy Rec Center tomorrow to teach the last six weeks of the final session before we took our summer break.

I’m sure I’m just a week behind everybody else who teaches—feeling bad for my students, uncertain as to what’s going to happen, wondering what long-term changes will be wrought by the whole thing—but those feelings are nonetheless genuine just because they’re a delayed version of what lots of other people have already had to face.

At least I don’t have the financial concerns of people who make a living teaching. (The little I earn teaching taiji is a small fraction of my annual income, plus I’ve already received most of what would have come in before we went on our summer break anyway. Besides which, they may well pay me for the class that had been started—I get a percentage of what my students pay, and they already paid a month ago. Maybe the Savoy Rec Center will refund the money to my students, but otherwise I expect them to pay me as usual. I’d be happy enough with either scenario.)

Anyway, although it’s purely a mental shift for me, my spring break is over.

I’m about to switch from “not teaching taiji because I’m on break” to “not teaching taiji because there’s a pandemic.”