Adaptation to COVID world

One good to come out of this is I am getting more and better sleep than I normally would. I still go to bed 10-10:30 like I always have and instead of getting up at 5, I'm sleeping until 6. Also, my mind is racing at night with things I have to do the next day because I know there's no great rush.

 

None of this has meant much of a change for me.

I've worked at home for 25 years, so it's all pretty familiar.

The struggle for folks new to it is structuring their day, especially in this seamless/dayless fog of pandemic. Most people are used to an external structure imposed on them by the job. M through F: Rise at 7 or whenever. Shower. Breakfast. Commute. Then all the work happens in a separate place, separately defined, separately bounded and with a separate cast of colleagues. Then quitting time. Then home. Help the kids with the homework. Throw the ball. Eat. Read. Watch TV. Sleep. Repeat. Your schedule builds itself.

The weekends are clearly delineated, too.

Building and adhering to the same kind of calendar at home can be a real challenge for some folks, even in normal circumstances. Now the steady ticktock of stress from C19 and Trump and the economy and the relentless uncertainty makes it all harder by an order of magnitude. The distractions are more distracting, the sleep routine takes a beating. You drink more you eat more you exercise less. You watch TV in the middle of the day. You roll around with the kids.

So you must impose what daily/hourly discipline you can on yourself. To the extent possible, make a separate place in which the work happens. Make a separate time for when the work happens. Until you get into a home office routine, don't try to multitask. Don't try to write or edit and cook and do the laundry and mop the floor and turn the TV on. Keep those things separate, as you did when you were going to work.

Set yourself a bed time and a waking time that conforms to the schedule you were on before. Same for exercising and chores. And get as much exercise as you can.

My work schedule hasn't really varied in a quarter century. I rely on its rigidity to keep me productive. I'm hugely lazy and distractable. But the daily routine keeps me on point.

This is all impossibly hard with kids, of course, but they'll conform to whatever schedule you make for them. Newborns or tweens or college kids, they need structure too.

Make a list every day of what needs to be done, then check things off as you go.

If you need any help with this, DM /PM me and we'll talk it through.

Hang in there. We'll make it.

 

I'm definitely drinking more, but I'm exercising more, too.
I am in teacher summer mode:
"What day is it?"
"Uhh, June?"

 

It’s really starting to hit me now that I have two groups of friends: employed and unemployed/furloughed.

That second group didn’t exist in February, and some friends have one spouse working and one not, which is disruptive as hell.

 

I'm actually finding trips to the grocery store more and more disturbing.

I went at 7:30 a.m. this morning, respecting the hour before that reserved for people 60-plus. The time that followed was troubling.

Part of that is more and more empty shelves. Huge parts of the frozen food section were empty. I keep seeing certain items disappear from shelves and they aren't there two and three weeks later. Last week there were frozen waffles. This week there were none. Last week I found a small package of rubber gloves. This week there were none. My wife keeps putting string beans on the list to no avail. The same is true of mashed potatoes, frozen or powder. The list of things I go looking for but can't find seems to be getting longer each week.

The behavior of fellow shoppers is also frustrating. My store normally has people enter and exit at both ends. Now they are asking people to enter on the far end and exit at the end nearer the way in and out of the parking lot. I've been there twice since the switch and both times as I left, some selfish asshole stared at the sign and entered at the wrong end anyway. They also put arrows on the floor trying to make each aisle one way. Pretty much every aisle has some schmuck going the wrong way. They ask people to only have one member from each household in the store, but people clearly ignore that. These two middle-aged women kept ending up in the same aisle as me, constantly stopping to chat and blocking the entire aisle while going the wrong way. Of course, they were oblivious to the dirty looks and my attempt at a loud "excuse me," which was muffled by my mask.

I really need my wife to take the next turn at the store before I run over someone with my shopping cart.

 

I find more people have endless time to yammer on and on and on in social media posts.

 

I frown at people in stores who irritate me, but they’re oblivious to my anger.

I think that might be because of my mask.

 

We have a fraction of the country who still think this is a hoax.

 

Our CVS has its prescription line starting so far from the counter that you feel a need to do an Arnold Horshack "Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" to make anyone notice you're there.

 

The Walgreen's that is my pharmacy has always had a drive-through prescription pickup window. This is now always jammed, while inside are relatively few, sometimes no people waiting when I go in.

 

CVS delivers.

CVS / Caremark mails prescriptions.