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So, I went on the JoCo cruise right as the panic about COVID started ramping up. It hadn't really become real for most Americans yet, but I know that a couple of folks thought that going on a cruise was pretty risky. I was giving non-zero odds that we'd end up quarantined in the ship, and I figured my job would probably be fine with me staying there instead of coming in to the cube farm.
I had been working from home, but did not have really great discipline about keeping my stats up. I finally let it slide far enough that my boss' boss said I had to come back to the office. I don't like it, but it's only two days a week (ten hour shifts; I'm half-time) so fuck it. I've got other shit to stress about so I'm not gonna sweat this.
Well, stuff got pretty bad during the week I was on the boat, and the President, surprising no one, made it a lot worse. As I got off the boat and headed for the airport, I texted my boss and he said that everyone was sent to work at home so I should pick up my laptop and otherwise stay the hell away from the call center. GREAT!
It's been really weird. JoCo is kind of my Burning Man; my break away from reality where everyone is focused on maintaining a community and putting conscious effort into being excellent to each other. The biggest controversy that came up was someone suggesting that we should stop referring to ourselves as 'Sea Monkeys' because calling someone a 'monkey' has a problematic racist component.
Then I come home to this. I had planned to engage in some self-quarantining for a week or so when I got home anyway, but then it turned into the town slowly shutting down, husband being told to work from home, and now we've got an official shelter-in-place order for Austin. Blue towns and states are doing this, but red states are all "Fuck it! This is all just a buncha ginned-up fear-mongering to make Trump look bad!" from the lower echelons, and "we must sacrifice the old and weak for the economy" from the higher echelons. It's hard to tell how severe this divide is; I'd like to think that even the most stubborn MAGA idiot would have enough sense to do the needful things to preserve themselves, but it's hard to say how close to home it has to hit before the refusal to admit they were wrong is overcome. It seems like if the MAGA crowd continues to gather it will become a self-correcting problem, but I can't blithely dismiss the huge amount of unnecessary suffering this will cause, both to the 'deserving' and to innocent neighbors, family members, et cetera. The horror stories coming out of hospitals in hard-hit areas are... well, horrifying.
I try not to think about it too much.
I have limited success.
Mostly for me, and my work-at-home job, and my husband and his now work-at-home job, and our already seriously introverted ways, this is nothing. Mike has reasonably suspended our get-togethers. Joel is still coming over and Eric is still seeing Colleen because those are all pretty much closed loops. This is harder on Joel because while he has the ability to work at home, his discipline is not great and his anxiety is making this hard. We came up with a schedule that mostly just codified what he was already doing but severely curtailed his Twitter activity and added in some meditation.
Focusing in close makes it easier to deal with, since it's what I can control. At the start of this I figured I'd probably get the virus, shake it off, and move on, but after reading some accounts and having gotten over pneumonia in the last few months, I'm not so sure. So I've gone from not being super careful about it to watching videos about how to disinfect take-out meals and groceries.
I can't think of an ending for this, and it's almost 2 and I need to get out of bed and eat something.
I had been working from home, but did not have really great discipline about keeping my stats up. I finally let it slide far enough that my boss' boss said I had to come back to the office. I don't like it, but it's only two days a week (ten hour shifts; I'm half-time) so fuck it. I've got other shit to stress about so I'm not gonna sweat this.
Well, stuff got pretty bad during the week I was on the boat, and the President, surprising no one, made it a lot worse. As I got off the boat and headed for the airport, I texted my boss and he said that everyone was sent to work at home so I should pick up my laptop and otherwise stay the hell away from the call center. GREAT!
It's been really weird. JoCo is kind of my Burning Man; my break away from reality where everyone is focused on maintaining a community and putting conscious effort into being excellent to each other. The biggest controversy that came up was someone suggesting that we should stop referring to ourselves as 'Sea Monkeys' because calling someone a 'monkey' has a problematic racist component.
Then I come home to this. I had planned to engage in some self-quarantining for a week or so when I got home anyway, but then it turned into the town slowly shutting down, husband being told to work from home, and now we've got an official shelter-in-place order for Austin. Blue towns and states are doing this, but red states are all "Fuck it! This is all just a buncha ginned-up fear-mongering to make Trump look bad!" from the lower echelons, and "we must sacrifice the old and weak for the economy" from the higher echelons. It's hard to tell how severe this divide is; I'd like to think that even the most stubborn MAGA idiot would have enough sense to do the needful things to preserve themselves, but it's hard to say how close to home it has to hit before the refusal to admit they were wrong is overcome. It seems like if the MAGA crowd continues to gather it will become a self-correcting problem, but I can't blithely dismiss the huge amount of unnecessary suffering this will cause, both to the 'deserving' and to innocent neighbors, family members, et cetera. The horror stories coming out of hospitals in hard-hit areas are... well, horrifying.
I try not to think about it too much.
I have limited success.
Mostly for me, and my work-at-home job, and my husband and his now work-at-home job, and our already seriously introverted ways, this is nothing. Mike has reasonably suspended our get-togethers. Joel is still coming over and Eric is still seeing Colleen because those are all pretty much closed loops. This is harder on Joel because while he has the ability to work at home, his discipline is not great and his anxiety is making this hard. We came up with a schedule that mostly just codified what he was already doing but severely curtailed his Twitter activity and added in some meditation.
Focusing in close makes it easier to deal with, since it's what I can control. At the start of this I figured I'd probably get the virus, shake it off, and move on, but after reading some accounts and having gotten over pneumonia in the last few months, I'm not so sure. So I've gone from not being super careful about it to watching videos about how to disinfect take-out meals and groceries.
I can't think of an ending for this, and it's almost 2 and I need to get out of bed and eat something.
