In the study of everyday life, a key concept is the distinction between the “everyday” and the “event.” Events call attention to themselves, are remembered and perhaps recorded, have a chance of being preserved in history. Even for individual people, events stand out from routine life; we remember them, and we may deliberately keep these memories alive, through practices like scrapbooking or marking anniversaries. Births, deaths, falling in love, times of illness or misfortune, career landmarks—these become the dots we connect when we tell ourselves our life stories.
One way of viewing the everyday: it consists of everything else: all that is routine (waking, dressing, grooming, cooking, caretaking, daydreaming), and the countless experiences that break the routine in minor ways but are likely to pass unnoticed or evaporate quickly from memory.
The Covid-19 pandemic complicates and accentuates this distinction between the everyday and the event. It is a collossal and virtually universal event—we will all remember the pandemic as a perhaps unmatched disruption and transformation of our lives, and it will shape histories of our time. But its myriad effects unfold, in constantly changing ways, in the everyday. It has made us more conscious of everyday life: things we used to do automatically now require conscious action—the wearing of masks, standing six feet apart, other kinds of vigilance. It has disrupted old routines and forced us to create new ones. For those of us who have gotten sick, or lost jobs, or had to care for or grieve friends or relatives, it has virtually shut down normal life.
Because the pandemic straddles the realms of the historic and the everyday, efforts to document it have sprung up around the country and the world. There is a widespread sense that we are living in uniquely historic times and that our experiences—not only those of medical experts and government leaders—need to be recorded.
Mass Observation, the non-profit collective that has been documenting everyday life in Britain intermittently since the late 1930s, put out a call in spring for citizens of the U.K. to record and submit diaries of their pandemic experience. These diaries will supplement Mass Observation’s routine collection of materials from its panel of 500 volunteer writers. Every year, these volunteers answer multiple “directives”—surveys on specific topics related to everyday life. The organization also conducts a national “diary day” every year on May 12—the anniversary of the 1937 coronation of George VI and one of the key moments in Mass Observation’s early history.
In addition to such large-scale projects, individuals around the world are feeling the need to record and preserve this moment. Connie Schultz, a newspaper columnist in Sandusky, Ohio and the wife of Sen. Sherrod Brown, recently explained why she is keeping a pandemic diary and called on others to do the same. She says she was partially inspired by reading about Mass Observation in a history of England during World War II.
Mass Observation is a direct inspiration for Everyday Life in Middletown, and its staff has supported our efforts. Our methods follow Mass Observation’s model. And during the pandemic, we have thus far collected two sets of day diaries and a directive about life under quarantine. You can read the first set of diaries here; the second set—recording the activities, thoughts, and feelings of our volunteers on September 24—will be available on our online archive by the end of the month.
In this recent work we have also partnered with the Muncie Public Libraries and the office of Archives and Special Collections at Ball State’s Bracken Library to support and cross-promote our efforts to document the pandemic.
We invite you to join in these efforts. Sign up to become one of our volunteer diarists. Or submit written accounts, pictures, artwork, or other artifacts to the MPL or BSU library projects. You can find information on these linked projects here.