It feels like the last thing that happened was the election, followed by the massive rejection of the election results, followed by Christmas, New Year’s, and an frenzied assault on the Capitol.
Oh, and despite all our efforts to be safe when going out, we managed to catch COVID.
I hope I’m wrong but we all might get this thing…
It was about a week into December when my wife came home from her job at the bank with symptoms of a chest cold. Just a mild cough and congestion, but it’s work policy for immediate quarantine and a COVID test. Only 2 days later, she got the positive results back, and by then I had a fever and aches and felt like garbage.
I hadn’t been sick in over 2 years, and to suddenly have multiple symptoms of coronavirus, including loss of smell, that was enough to assume that I had it, too. My disappointment was immense. I couldn’t blame my wife, of course, she had to go to work, and she did everything she could to keep safe. It’s everyone else you have to worry about, and their half-assed masking and dirty cash.
Luckily, we only had mild symptoms and were able to get better at home. We just super-quarantined for a couple weeks… getting groceries delivered to our car, had food deliveries, and kept my daughter home from school. She was attending school in-person 2 days a week. There’s a non-zero chance she could have brought the virus home with her, which makes it worrisome that starting next week, schools are going to be fully in-person.
Hopefully that works out.
I think the most frustrating part about this whole ordeal is that by and large we did everything right. Masked up every time we went anywhere, stayed away from most people, only visited a very select few family members, didn’t go out to restaurants or bars… and still got the negative impact of someone who did do all these things. At least we prevented a potential spread of it to others. And had only a mild case of it by getting exposed to a smaller dose of the virus.
It does take some of the mystery out of it, and we’ll probably be able to coast on the antibodies until vaccines become more readily available for “normal” people.
And we’re still working from home…
When I started working from home back in March of 2020, the only thing I had to do design work on was an old 11″ MacBook Air. Yes, the tiny one.
That was back when we were sheltering in place for 2 weeks at a time, and slowly extending it into the spring and summer. A combination of optimism, ignorance and disinformation kept us all guessing as to when we’d go back.
Luckily I was able to get a company MacBook Pro for me to use at home and that was an amazing difference in how much easier it is to get work done.
It’s entirely likely that I won’t have to go back to the office. Maybe ever. And the fact that it took a pandemic to prove this might be the most disappointing thing of all. I’m saving hundreds of dollars every month on transportation and childcare, and still just as productive as ever. I know it’s not the same for everyone, but I’m absolutely thriving here at home.
