Life and How to Live It

[inspectorjason]

Back in early December, I went to a memorial service for my first cousin in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and was in close proximity to my brother and sister-in-law for 24 hours, staying with them in a condo, riding in a vehicle with them, eating out with them, and such. They were both vaccinated.
My brother was coughing on the first day, and assumed that he had simply caught a cold from my nieces, but he started to feel worse over the weekend.
Two days later, my brother and sister-in-law both tested positive for COVID, and were both hospitalized for a day. They thankfully recovered.
I tested negative, and I never developed symptoms. I had received a booster shot a few weeks prior, though.

(Incidentally, with regard to the memorial service, my first cousin died of alcoholism, not COVID. She was only a year older than me, had been a big-hair headbanger party girl during the 1980s, and had always lived for the moment. Two years ago, a doctor had told her that she would die if she did not stop drinking. She was admitted into a hospice last year, and died four days later. It was a heartbreaking thing to happen.)

[phlmth]

I believe in God’s hands. But, I also believe that he or she had a hand in the Covid vaccine. I’ve had a lifetime of vaccines and shots and never worried about it. But yet this shot is worried about like a hot potato. God teaches us to do for others. It is taught that what we do for others we do for Him/Her. That’s how I live my life. That’s why I wear a mask. That’s why I got the shots. Knowing that if it was my time, it was my time.

I’ve not had Covid but I think that has a lot to do with blood type. And the fact that I am not immuno compromised in any way

[pcsousa]

Totally with you. Every single word you wrote.

[Dream_Brother]

I work in a clinic that does viral research, so the big change when Covid reared it’s head was that we moved from mostly HIV studies to a lot of Covid studies as well. We participated in the AZ and Johnson & Johnson trials as well as numerous trials for various therapies.

It was pretty nerve wracking towards the beginning to be handling Covid positive samples before vaccines existed and before anyone really knew anything about the virus. I never went remote. Now the new version of working in healthcare is likely here to stay, and that’s fine. I doubt we will ever not wear masks at work.

Personally, my wife and I have been mostly staying at home or going to outdoor places. I eat out much less than I used to. We bought a house on a beautiful piece of land with an incredible view in September of 2019 and have been busy with indoor renovations as well as major outdoor landscaping projects. We built a Japanese garden, we’ve planted in excess of 500 native plants on the property, we terraced a hill and planted fruit trees and bushes. Now, we are in the process of removing a lawn and building raised beds for vegetables. Being able to be outside and stay busy has really helped with the stir craziness.

I still haven’t had Covid, though it feels almost inevitable. Most everyone I work with has now.

[Slinky1]

I think this is a very interesting discussion. I have spent my career as an professor at a Medical School and have had various administrative roles. During the spring of 2020 when we went into lock down it was strange to move all of the teaching to online. It was strange because you were teaching cardiovascular physiology from the kitchen table with a cat walking across the keyboard or a dog barking in the background. It was a struggle to turn things around on with only days notice.

On a more personal level, I had been in the position I was in for 24+ years and COVID pushed me to decide that it was time for a change. I was approached about an administrative position at a smaller medical school, which put me closer to family and more importantly my 97 year old mother. I moved in the fall of 2020, which was a strange time to be moving by yourself to a new city where you didn’t know anyone. For the first 8 months, all work related meetings were via zoom and I only saw 2 of my co workers in person.

Honestly, I am just now beginning to feel like I can get out and meet people in a social situation. I have so far avoided getting COVID but since Christmas, I think every one I work directly with either had it themselves or had family members that did.

[InternetLegend]

I got to work from home for a few weeks after schools went online, and it was really weird. Kathleen was teaching at the time, so I was a witness to the scramble of adapting lesson plans for remote learning with almost no notice, and I knew the district’s tech department was getting Chromebooks to all our kids as fast as possible, but there wasn’t much I could do to help, and about half of my day-to-day tasks just disappeared with no kids to manage. Once they forced me to go work back at the school building, even though it was closed to the public and they had to find me a separate office to work in away from the one Covid-denier who was also working on-site (not that I’m bitter), I mainly caught up on records management, fielded phone calls from parents who were baffled by Google Classroom, and streamed shows on my computer. It was kind of a relief when they brought the kids back on campus last spring, even though it’s more than a little nerve-wracking to be in the company of that many hygeine-challenged potential carriers all the time. Now I’m just counting down the days to retirement (71 as of today).

[bizaleth]

Boy, I have thoughts. I’m an academic librarian 90 miles north of Seattle, so COVID hit here early and fast. We were watching what was happening in Seattle and began making plans for the worst (complete shut down)—which is what happened (as we all know).

I’m definitely an introvert and it took me almost two months to really miss being around people. But, over time, I really grew to hate working from home. I mean, I loved the commute but my condo is 600sq ft so I don’t have an office outside of my dining table (and I finally accepted that it will always be my office and not a dining table). It became almost impossible to separate my personal and work time and I hated that.

What was a big shift for me was exercise. I lift weights and was sidelined pre-pandemic due to surgery I had in Dec 2019. I was limited to lifting no more than one pound w/my left hand for three months. Prior to COVID, I was deadlifting 220lbs. I got the post-surgery brace off and was given permission to slowly begin lifting again the second week of March 2020, so….

Lifting (and boxing) was a physical thing for me (I’ve developed arthritis in my knees and weight lifting helped), but it was also a mental thing and a big stress relief. And not having that was difficult. I began exercising outside and at home. And I was one of the many people who bought a peloton bike (and I love my cult bike). But getting back to the gym was always one of my priorities. (I am back and I’m deadlifting 235lbs, now).

But work’s been different. I am working a hybrid schedule now. And our library was shut down to the public until Sept 2021. Dealing with the pushback from users was hard. And it’s really nice to be back and I love being around students and my colleagues again. WA state still requires masks inside, and most students comply, and we’re a highly vaccinated campus (and I’m boosted), but there is still this undercurrent of uncertainty and stress.

I miss hanging out with friends, but we’ve found new ways: backyard fires, outside seating. But I’ve also found that I get more exhausted by less interaction now than I did before.

[monktbd]

I just came back to get my booster shot so it seems fitting to reply here right now.

When the pandemic hit it was surprising how quickly our company managed to move to remote work without losing a step. For a company that usually wanted people to be on prem that was quite unusual but probably also speaks for the people working there in general.
We had the luxury to be called providing an existential service (because of where our products are used) so even during lockdowns we could have the a skeleton crew on prem to keep things going.

Personally I have been working from home now for close to 2 years. I have been in the office four times since then. Without being able to have proper in person meetings it also makes little sense to go back. Because of this the company also wants to shift to a hybrid working environment where you could be up to 50% working from home once the pandemic is over.
That is great as it saves time, nerves and gas on the road.
I do miss the in person meetings and simply talking to people though. Teams, Zoom, etc… just are not really a good medium to replace that.

Working from home in general is also different. It somewhat plays with my mind as it is not easy to separate “work” from “not work” simply because of being always in the same environment and I do not have an office room at home that I would simply not go to when off work.

[phlmth]

I’m sorry.

[phlmth]

I am completely remote, having made that choice. We had a choice between remote, hybrid, or 100% in office. I’m only 3.2 miles away from the office but I still chose remote. I get more work done this way. And I do shut down the computer and don’t go back until the next day. But I understand. I do have a tendency to work over what I should work. But salaried it all bleeds together.

[socks]

I was forced face to face with Covid right away. And I had a 4th grader and a 3 year old to deal with and keep safe. My husband and I were both working in essential positions so there was no time to figure anything out. I struggled hard, especially because my therapist couldn’t/wouldn’t see me because I was constantly exposed to covid (it was the regulations of their office, not my therapist herself, eventually she just told me to lie on the screening form…) so I didn’t even have that support. And I got sick in April 2020 with presumptive covid, my husband was out of town and it was just me and the kids. That was a blast.

I have seen so much death and suffering from it. I got my vaccinations as soon as I could - December 2020 I had my first one, and I was fully boosted on Oct 2. My husband is vaccinated, but tested positive over Thanksgiving and received the monoclonal antibody treatment so he’s just becoming eligible for the booster now. Both my kids are fully vaccinated. We travel, but we are good with masks and hand sanitizer. Most of my friend group locally is other nurses and their families, so we get together still, until I quit we were all exposed the same amount and it was worth it for our mental health. We do most stuff outside anyway (we camp together, do bonfires, etc.).

My tween wears a mask best out of all of us. Even when mandates go away in schools (yay Michigan!), she will still wear hers. The kindergartener doesn’t complain about it, as she barely remembers the before times. I’m probably more lax than I should be, but I wear a mask at the store, etc, and try to do delivery/contactless stuff when I can.

I have a complicated relationship with Covid and have recently been diagnosed with PTSD partially due to some of my experiences with it. The flashbacks I had when T was sick were horrible. I learned a lot about people by how they have dealt with the pandemic and the politics around it. It has become abundantly clear just how much more liberal T and I are than our neighbors. We’re doing our best. It’s all anyone can do.

[ghamina]

Honestly we enjoyed elements of lockdown. We’re pretty introverted and like each other (debatable when you add the kids…) and we live within walking distance of the beach. We spent a big chunk of it just enjoying having the beach to ourselves with only our socially distanced neighbours for company.

I already had a hybrid schedule, working part time in the office until school pickup, and working from home in the afternoons and weekends depending on deadlines. So transitioning to working from home was easy for me. My bosses have agreed I can pretty much keep working from home indefinitely, which is mostly a plus, I’ve only been in once since lockdown. Trying to juggle working from home with homeschooling was difficult, but I was conflicted when we had to send them back. We’ve taken everything very seriously and basically haven’t been in public for most of the last two years, get all of our groceries delivered, etc.

We are lucky that we live in a beautiful area and were free to go for walks and get out and about without needing to be in crowded areas. We did end up going to London for a US Embassy appointment, but that was very well organised and felt safe. Restrictions had eased, so honestly it felt busier at home than in the city!

We got vaccinated as soon as we could and have gotten our oldest jabbed as well. If they rolled out under 12s in the UK we’d jump on that as well. Our oldest ended up getting it in October, but was very mild, and thankfully no one else in the house ended up with it.

A fair chunk of my family have had it now, but everyone has come through thankfully. I’m still not comfortable with transitioning to being more active in public, but have started venturing out a bit more. I started a yoga class again recently and felt very conflicted about it, but need it to balance my mental and physical well being.

[DrinkTheElixir]

I was and still am working in day surgery and theatres. We deal with a lot of cancer surveillance and orthopaedic surgery, plastic surgery etc. Very quickly we were shut down and redeployed to main sites. Some in recovery and in my case trauma. Chaotic, terrifying. I can’t actually describe it. It was surreal.

Cancer surveillance has started again and, I am beyond grateful that I am back on my department at home. Albeit in PPE and continual screening in a restricted area - but I home with my team, which means such a lot. Work family are everything in a crisis.

[Gargumma]

If I were to tell you guys how much my life has changed from January 2020 to January 2022, I’d probably crash Murmurs. And it wasn’t even just because of lockdowns and all. And I didn’t even get covid on my way to now.

[drew]

Like Biz on the west coast, I was in a pretty unique position to witness the beginnings of how horrible it would get. I’m in New York State, and what happened very early on in NYC was shortly repeated throughout the state (though not to the same degree). I had a 100% in-office job that required periodic travel to Mass/CT for trials, mediations, hearings, settlement conferences, and that was all wiped off the table in one fell swoop. While we here in Buffalo never had the horrific onslaught of continuous ambulance sirens NYC had in March/April 2020, we saw the news, saw Andrew Cuomo’s daily briefings, and all felt lost. I’m an introvert who loves getting out, so while I never had a problem finding things to keep occupied at home, I dearly missed the daily bustle of city life and the random encounters with coworker friends in the hallways or cafeteria at work. I missed going to record stores. I made sure early on to make a bubble of myself, Julia, Nicole in one pocket and my two best friends here (a couple) in another pocket (who were even less social than me) and made concerted efforts to keep doing things with both groups. I can only presume it all worked because - knock on wood - everyone in my bubbles has avoided covid to date.

Work at the turn of a switch went 100% remote except for critical support staff, fortunately I was not one of them. I’ve been in my office twice since March 18, 2020 - once the following Monday to grab a few things from my desk and reboot my PC, and once late December 2021 for a tiny holiday party. We had absolutely no plans to ever be a WFH company for anyone so that GEICO with its 44k employees was able to pull it off in a week was and is still amazing to me. Being that the nature of my job already required periodic travel, I already had the remote access suite on my MacBook to remote into my work desktop PC so it was literally dead simple to leave the office on a Wednesday and hit the ground running at 8am Thursday but from my living room. For most though, it was a lot of hard work to get running. Most departments are now on a phased-in flexwork RTO plan, but mine is now forevermore WFH. I’m not sure how I feel about it - I am able to separate my work/living spaces enough not to feel claustrophobic about it, and that my 1976 vintage Sony receiver - which is connected to vintage Advent speakers I inherited - is literally a quarter chair swivel away at all times while working, with my attendant 500-ish LP collection isn’t anything to shake a stick at, I do miss those prosaic interactions that only happen in-person. I’d prefer a hybrid approach, but I’ll live.

As soon as NY retail reopened in May/June 2020, I was at record stores. It was such an amazing feeling, and some of my best-ever used LP finds were in those early months back when far fewer people felt comfortable going to retail in-person. For a good 9-10 months my favorite thing to say to folks about pandemic living was that the only places I went to in person were record and grocery stores.

Seeing Wilco here in Buffalo - well, Lewiston technically - in August 2021 was such a giant celebration of “shit’s back, baby!!”. Not only was I starved for live music, not having seen a show since Peter Hook and the Light in November 2019 in Toronto, WAY too long to be without live music, I hadn’t seen Wilco since 2002. And they were still a band pretty high up on my “most seen live” list, even with that 19 year gap. It was so good, so amazing just to see again and it seems like they played “Via Chicago” just for me, as it was the tour’s live debut that night.

Since then I’ve flown to Atlanta and seen the Connells with Jason and Sandi, shared a bedroom with Peter Holsapple, had my 30+1 high school reunion in Chicago, had brunch with some Tar band members, and seen my dad and sister/nephews in Annapolis. I’m going to Boston next week to attend a trial - first work trip since Boston early Feb 2020. Am currently on the guest list for Bob Mould in Annapolis first weekend in March if he doesn’t postpone. I’m doing pretty good.

[Avalon]

Just before we went into lockdown we had decided it was time to buy a home here in Spain. There isn’t anything like the MLS here, so browsing online wasn’t too fruitful, not that we could leave the house to go see places anyhow. It was kind of thrilling to be forced to stay home aside from necessities. My husband and I are natural introverts. I was perfectly happy joining the Sourdough Starter gang doing jigsaw puzzles, and the occasional zoom meeting with family and friends. Our visas here don’t allow us to work, so it was life as normal, but inside only.

Once the world kinda opened back up, we fairly quickly found and bought a home. It needed a lot of work done, so that kept us busy.

Once vaccines arrived, travel to visit family & friends back in the US got to finally happen. It had been two years and I really needed it. I spent a month there and for about half of it I got a horrific cold and spent a lot of down time. That was back in Oct-Nov.

Since returning back to Spain I’ve been battling a lot of depression issues. I’m homesick. I hate not being able to work. I never had a career, but I always did some sort of online resale like ebay. I enjoy the thrill of finding thrift store treasures. Once we hit 5 years here, my husband & I can get permanent residency, and legally work. That happens in November.

[OneArpeggioPete2.0]

As your friendly neighbourhood S***k tech support person - when you good people all went remote at the same time (as did we ourselves of course, I’ve been to the office once since March 2020, and that was to pick up the stuff on my desk), our workload here tripled overnight. It was important and I’m glad we were able to help with keeping the world going in our own little way, but yikes - I can has lollie?

[phlmth]

I miss my boys.

Excited for you though. You’ll have to share some of your projects for your new home. As well as your finds.

[phlmth]

The company I work for had gone through a multi year look at the company and what they wanted to focus on. That was both diversity and improving technology. It was the latter that helped transitioning 80% of the workforce in our four corporate centers across the US within three weeks of the pandemic hitting. Going remote was no big deal as they already had a plan in place. Additionally, like many companies they probably found they didn’t need all the space. What they did with the space was take all those essential employees and put them several cubicles apart.

What I love about this company is that they want true experts: regardless of their pronoun, regardless of who they love, regardless of disability, regardless of age. And they were serious about keeping us all safe. My digital team is fully remote with some C suite people hybrid.

Additionally, those businesses and firms associated with our company were also set up to succeed as the technology that had ‘been grown’ in the past two years was already in place. To say we got lucky, is an understatement.

1AP2.0 > thank you for people like you and everything you do.

[Willis]

Hi Penny, nice to “meet you” again.

For us, we moved from the US to Germany in November 2019. We were all adjusting to life in a new(ish) country when Corona hit. My daughter (4 at the time) was learning the language and making some friends at daycare while I was at home with our little guy. Daycare shut down for 3+ months so it was me and the kids at home, doing our best.

Our “normal” life pre-Covid was anything but as we were in this huge transition phase. What it did was delay our integration and due to the ongoing restrictions here, we’re still finding our feet.

A trip to the US was scheduled for May 2020 but wasn’t realized until summer 2021.

What’s been interesting is seeing the difference in approaches to the pandemic between Germany and the US. Here we have an app with our vaccination info we show to enter places, everyone wears masks regularly, lots of testing and vaccinations are free, and we were sent masks last year from our state government.

My wife and I have always prioritized our family unit, which is a good thing for the pandemic.