This lockdown has completely blown my sense of time in a way that I did not anticipate.
I feel a lot like Yossarian from Catch-22 right about now. While the world around me is hunkered down, I have to maintain a normal work schedule and placement, traveling to my job every day like I’ve always done - so the slow collapse of the world in which I must travel and try to find some order highlights the absurdity of my function here.
My own timeline is disjointed because I have to behave like everything is flowing the way it should to provide an anchor of stability to a frightened public, but those people are in such a different time stream than I am that I can’t even process their needs and lose sight of my own in trying to do so.
Less of a vital role, but I know exactly what you mean. I’ve said it feels like I’m sleepwalking through the apocalypse. I get up, go to work every day.
But the roads are quiet.
And things aren’t right at the edges. I can see what’s going on in the corner of my eye. Three weeks in, the grocery store is still erratic, large empty spots randomly distributed for stuff that’s just… not there right now. Limits on purchases. Procedures for sterilization when I visit my girlfriend.
Everything is strange, and I wonder which will be the bigger adjustment: things starting to open up again, or this becoming normal.
One thing that’s really helping is the nightly cheer.
It’s so quiet here despite the density. It’s easy to forget that there are tens of thousands of people hunkered down within shouting distance of my apartment.
Every evening in NYC, everyone starts clapping and cheering and banging pans together to remind us all that we survived another day, and that we’re still here.
Inmate livestreams on a smuggled phone. His cellmate is clearly sick but isn’t isolated. A nurse told him half of them would die. There’s a tent on the basketball court for dead bodies.
I’m not essential but I have to go to work anyway. I work security and first responder at a factory that makes appliances. They have a warehouse in the back, mile long and quarter mile deep, where they stack product ready to ship practically floor to ceiling. I don’t know sales numbers but that could probably sustain them for a month or two. They did shit down the park for about a week and a half to put new ‘safeguards’ in place to help prevent disease spread. They’re… dumb. Pieces of tape marking six feet on pathways, temperature check stations at checkpoints, plexiglass barriers where they cannot establish a six foot separation. The union was pissed, clearly, because they held a protest drag race in the parking lot the day before they were to come back. But they went back to work despite grumbling. I hear their President is considering a strike vote, but nothing so far. Frankly I want them to strike; COVID-19 will rip through this place if even one person comes in with it. They need to be home.
I’m trying to find a way to subtly influence public opinion to get them to strike.
I don’t think we need seven days anymore. I think “yesterday”, “today” and “tomorrow” fully suffice. Anything else is either “the past” or “the future”, though the second one is kind of incomprohensible at this moment. As someone who still has a job I can also see a case for “non-work-day” as a category.
And I’m pretty much the same. Since we’ve always had a huge “WFH” culture here (To the point that there are some people in Boston that I have never met), so the only difference is I can’t go out to DnD on Wednesday.
Up to today I’ve been very busy. At the best of times I always feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day and that hasn’t changed. Then I get to this morning and the invoices I deal with weekly have dried up.
I sent my boss an email last night codedly asking for construction drawings to measure for materials and labour predictions because I would rather stay working than be furloughed.
It’s nice spending time with my family. We inadvertently went into isolation a week earlier than everyone else when my wife broke her ankle and I started working from home to assist her.
Staying in I can manage, but she’s saying it’s turned her intellect to mush as she’s not done work work in just over a year. We’ve got our nine month old daughter which keeps her busy while I work. Any trips out to go shopping I do to limit the risk. We were building an extension which has stopped because we can’t get the materials for the roof so our washing machine is still at my mother in law’s house. And my wife still can’t get into our shower bath with her ankle, so we’ve been going to her mum’s once a week for laundry, her (accessible) shower and to drop off supplies for her.
We really need things that she can do around a baby because when she gets properly bored she starts trying to find why this is all happening and the next thing is that I’m being told about 5G and Covid 19 being correlated so there must be causation! And then I’ve got to interact with that, her armed with half an hour of research, me unarmed and preoccupied with running everything else, to show it’s some bogus conspiracy theory.
My wife is on parental leave and when you have a baby and a mobile phone it just destroys your attention span. She can’t read a book or watch a movie so just reads more and more.
Luckily for me it’s just constant news instead of conspiracy theories but that is because she can still do exercise and met a lot of other mums during NCT.
Go for a - socially responsible - walk as soon a you can. Biking can be easier on ankles than walking if you have the baby accessories.
I live in Barcelona (Spain). Despite measures taken from catalan and spanish governments, going for the 4th week into severe confinement here, I’ve to say people is relaxing and the streets do not feel empty anymore. Everyone queeing in front of some supermarket or grocery store, respecting the distance, while sunbathing in what is a splendid day. The air actually feels more fresh than before, less pollution. Living with my love and two children (of 5 and 8 years old) I can’t help but to feel hope and very positive (if I do not look into the future or who’d be leading us through it).
Animal Crossing sound like it might help. Daily tasks and long term goal setting along with no time sensitive gameplay so it can be dropped at moments notice
That is something I’ve noticed in New York as well. The air is cleaner and clearer than I’ve ever experienced in a decade of living in the City. It’s weird.
Just got the phone call from my boss. After tomorrow I’m off for three weeks at 80% pay. We’ve already arranged a mortgage holiday so although that debt carries forward we’re still better off in the short term.
