As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rock the music industry, GRAMMY.com reached out to a few musicians to see how they were spending their days indoors. Today, Ben Dumas, the drummer of Nashville band the Wild Feathers, shares his reflections on quarantine and the pandemic. Their latest album, Medium Rarities, is out now.

They say to take it one day at a time. Seems simple, but how do you take it when it's all just one long day that lasts for weeks? Or months? What if this long, singular day lasts for years or what if that's just how it will always be now?

When I lay in bed in the morning after waking, I try my hardest to resist the urge to open Twitter to check the news; hoping for some kind of positive message from somewhere that will indicate that all this will turn around and end soon. My wife is always out of the bed before me because she is able to do her job from home. I'll get up and make us coffee and something to eat to make myself seem useful. My life normally consists of me making a living touring the country playing music most days and nights of the year, so it's difficult to know what to do (and not feel guilty) stuck at the house nonstop while my wife works her ass off from her computer on our kitchen table that's now her work desk. It's difficult to know how to contribute.

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I'll check Twitter again looking for answers, and of course there are none there. I'll set up a makeshift home gym in our living room and we will both do some exercises. I make lunch. I check Twitter—no answers.

It's really important to keep your mind (and heart) occupied. There's an endless tide of worry that will come and go. (Will my parents be okay if they get it? Will I have a job again? Will the world kindly and bravely work together to get through this?) So I spend the afternoons taking the dogs on walks, reading and texting friends and family (and maybe checking Twitter). They all tell me they are hanging in there and doing the best they can. Same here. The friends that live just a few miles away feel as far away as the friends that live on the other side of the country. But it's great hearing from them.

Maybe later on in the evening we will all get on a video group chat and get hammered and laugh about shit. (Maybe someday soon we'll all get hammered together in person and laugh about the times when we had to do it over a video group chat.) They ask about when I'll be touring again and I say my guess is as good as theirs, but I'm hopeful it will be soon. They don't know when they will be back at work either. I'll check Twitter again to see if there's anything new that I need to know. Shockingly, there is not.

Going to the grocery store is the absolute worst. (I feel very confident now that whoever coined the term "avoid it like the plague" was, in fact, living during a plague.) Shuffling through the aisles trying to find decent stuff that hasn't already sold out and trying to dodge all the mask-less open-mouth breathers who don't seem to give a shit about decency and the safety of others.

Say what you will about the legitimacy of this whole thing and crazy socio-political agendas, but you're not helping anyone by railing against compassion for your fellow humans with whom you share this planet. There was a period of time where masks were not as readily available. Stores everywhere were sold out. The first one I wore was one that my wife fashioned out of my favorite Georgia Bulldogs bandana and two elastic hair-ties. I will never forget her putting it on and smiling, being humorously proud of and chuckling at the silly little mask she crafted. She's always my beacon of positivity, an inspirational happy-go-lucky ray of f***ing sunshine. Seeing her smile underneath it gravely pulled on my heartstrings and cut me with a pang of solemnity at the realization that this is what it has come to—we are going to have to wear these masks in public and we might as well f***ing try to smile underneath them.

I'm really trying to elevate my cooking game. Incredibly, my wife isn't completely bored with every dish I make for dinner—yet. How many bottles of wine do we have left? Let's have another glass then. I check Twitter to see if there's anything new (Vaccine? Are the numbers good or bad? When will I be able to play music in person for people? How are other countries handling it? Does our government give a shit about us?). There are obviously no answers on Twitter. Nor are there any in the news. Maybe there are no answers to any of those questions anywhere. But eventually you learn that that's OK. The answers you do need are out there if you can let yourself find them, however. The answers are in another glass of wine with your quarantine partner, or yet another beer with the friends on the video chat. The answer is in trying to make the same spinach salad for lunch for the sixth day in a row seem like the culinary event of the year. The answer is on the walk with your dog or by yourself. It's in that smile underneath the mask.

I'm tired of hearing the term "unprecedented times." If that's what this is, then it's time for us to set the new precedent of understanding, sympathy and love. There's something to be said for sacrifice and compassion, and the rest is mundane details that we can engineer into wonder and excitement. And I suppose that's how we will deal with all this—together. Out of all the days we have ever had, today was—one of them? And like my dad always says, tomorrow's just another day.

Sincerely, my fellow reader, whoever you are, thank you for reading. I'm going to check Twitter now.

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