COVID-19 and your life

[Fury Resurrected]

Since the other threads are more about virus news, here’s one for how the pandemic has impacted you personally.

Where are you at?

Has it changed or closed your work?

How’s your mental health?

Has it out a strain on your household relationships?

[lessthanluke]

Had to close my gym. So lost a massive part of my income overnight.

Mental health wise not doing great due to a mixture of things. Worrying about money, lack of social interaction, stress from police visits, had 4 personal visits to our unit so far due to neighbours reporting us for being open (we aren't just my partner and I still using it)

Household relationship actually doing okay! Girlfriend and I already spent pretty much the same amount of time together, she's been getting very upset about losing the business which I'm having to constantly reassure her about but there are some positives like a bit more time to actually have some leisure time to watch movies, play with dogs etc so it's not all bad!

[Altherion]

I'm working from home which is actually much nicer than usual because I don't have to take the New York City subway and other than me slightly preferring my work desktop to my laptop (the display is larger) for work and chatting with coworkers being less frequent, there is no real difference in productivity.

The main downsides are that I don't get to see my girlfriend except over video and going outside is not much fun right now. I tried ordering groceries online, but the delivery slots for my zip code are really hard to come by so I mostly still go to stores in person. Mental health is about the same as usual.

[Derfel Cadarn]

5 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

Since the other threads are more about virus news, here’s one for how the pandemic has impacted you personally.

Where are you at?

Has it changed or closed your work?

How’s your mental health?

Has it out a strain on your household relationships?

I live in the UK.

I got a letter telling me to stay st home for 12 weeks due to being immune suppressed. I work for public sector (police staff) and was given a laptop to work from home, and my wife’s a nurse. So money wise no change, and as we’re both classed as key workers our 19 month old daughter gets to stay at nursery.

Mental health is fine. Hell, its given me a chance to catxh up on TV, films, books and video games that have been in hold since birth of my daughters. Also given me some time to work in my fourth novel (or did until pesky work laptop arrived).

Not really affected household strain beyond extra worry over thr pandemic in general and risks at my wife’s work.

[Alarich II]

Germany, I'm running a small accounting and tax law firm; about half of my employees work from home right now, the setup cost me a good chunk of money, but was definitively worth it. Only problem was getting the hardware, so the transition wasn't entirely smooth.

About 3 years ago I very nearly decided to specialize on hotels and restaurants but due to a lack of ressources and access to profitable clients I stopped that and went full reverse. Which today basically saves my ass because most of my clients can and do continue their business in some way, which makes up for those who are hit very hard.

My wife is going to lose her job by the end of June, and although it was only 15h part-time, being the only earner puts some extra stress on me. We'll see what comes next. Having to pay off a mortgage in these times is never fun. We have about 2.5 acres of land around our house, which is basically and old orchard and some oak trees so we can keep active at home and our kids are only 1.5 years apart, so the play a lot with each other. So the quarantine itself isn't particularly stressfull for any of us.

[ljkeane]

I've been furloughed from work and, as a result, my income has gone down but my spending has fallen more so I'm not too concerned about that.

I am hitting the wall a bit with the social distancing though. It doesn't help that I had quite a lot of stuff planned around now and the next few weeks that I was quite looking forward to. Watching days tick by when I was meant to be doing various things and instead I'm just sitting at home isn't a lot of fun and zoom meetups isn't really cutting it as an alternative.

[BigFatCoward]

No change at all, except journey to work has been a joy. Wife working from home and looking after 2 year old has been very stressful for her. So i'm now working from home 2 days a week now, and we both have take a day off a week for a few months so she only has 1 day a week by herself. Financially actually better off as childcare and travel costs have gone. 

Police should be driving recruitment now. After this a lot of qualified people are going to be looking for Job security and maybe wanting to serve the public. We should be able to attract a better class of candidate. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

My work got classified as critical infrastructure so I haven't suffered income wise.

My sanity is challenged though, the entirety of what society is going through right now is hard for me to process. My mind races when I think of the pain so many thousands of households must be experiencing. I worry about the "at risk" people I know personally. I worry about the damage to the national psyche, the damages to employers and employees alike.

What long term problems will be left in the wake of this pandemic? I for one, do not believe things will just snap back to normal. 

All these things grieve me, not only for where we are at, but also for the possible difficulties still ahead of us.

Also on a personal note, losing my ability to regularly use a swimming pool really bothers me, as that was my most beneficial exercise. I just do not feel as well without my pool workouts.

I try to enjoy the outdoors as much as possible during my downtime. That's about my best distraction from this damnable plague.

Eta: I'm in Northern Wisconsin

[Luzifer's right hand]

 

Nvm

 

[Maltaran]

I’m on a rota - 2 weeks working from home and 2 weeks in the office. I work for a bank which makes me a key worker, but the bosses have worked out the minimum amount of staff that actually need to come in to deal with physical paperwork and everyone else is on WFH.

[A wilding]

We have been lucky. We are both able to work from home and have been doing so since early March (both of our companies being smart enough to realise lockdown was needed before the UK government did). We are also able to easily escape into the nearby Chiltern hills and have been doing a lot of long walks to help keep us sane (glorious Spring weather, eerily quiet apart from the birdsong). Our main current concern is for various elderly relatives living on their own.

[Fez]

I've been very lucky so far.

I've been working from home for 8 years, with only occasional travel to client sites so there's been minimal change in my workflow. The only disruption has been some people being slow to get back to me on stuff because they have to adjust to working from home themselves. And my work is fully funded at least through September 30, so that's been a relief. I suspect it will be fine beyond that, since its not the kind of thing that usually gets cut in a downturn; but I am planning on building up my savings over the next several months just in case.

I've been able to consistently get grocery and essential item deliveries through Amazon and Walmart. So, other than going for walks, throwing out the trash, and getting the mail, I have not left my apartment since March 8. Which has been great for virus protection, but less great for my mental health.

I'm not going stir crazy, I have plenty of distractions. But I am enjoying things like video games less than I usually do; and I'm not sleeping great. I've done a few virtual happy hours and game nights, and those have been really good. I miss seeing my friends in person.

I'm worried about my parents; especially my mom who is in a high risk category. I also expect a big fight with my dad in a few weeks. Before all this started, I bought a plane ticket to go see him in June to help close down his private commercial office as he moves into semi-retirement. And he's already pushing me to make sure I either still fly up, or get a rental car instead and drive the 8 hours to him. But I think there's just way too many risks involved, and not just to me. I could easily get it and give it to him. On top of that, I doubt I'll be able to find a cat sitter for me while I'm gone. So that's another thing I'm stressing over.

 

[Jeor]

I've been very lucky. I've lived alone for ten years and I've travelled the world solo before, so I'm pretty comfortable being alone. As a high school teacher it's been pretty crazy doing all this online stuff, but compared to most of the other teachers here I don't have a family so working from home has actually been fairly straightforward.

My parents are fine, they're both nearing 70 so are getting to the "danger zone" but in Australia the incidence is very low. They're pretty sensible and practical and haven't gone out, and they've turned out to be closet preppers all these years (they grew up in third-world southeast Asia in the 1950s and 60s, so as my father said, they're very used to stockpiling and contingency planning).

The real silver lining has been that I've been working on a PhD part-time while I've been working full-time, and have never really been able to get going. It's due later this year so I needed to get moving on it, and the COVID-19 working from home thing has meant that I've had far more time to work on it and I shouldn't have any trouble getting it in by the deadline now.

I do feel a little guilty that I've been actually enjoying the situation when I know a lot of other people are struggling - my brother has three young children and they are finding it tough.

[sologdin]

reasonably fortunate here, also.  am working from my porch in new orleans sunshine. must convince my capitalists that they should permit work-from-porch in perpetuity.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

The only thing I'll say for myself: no excuses not to study for the GRE and LSAT, whenever we can actually take the tests again. Plus side of all of this is grad and law schools should be cheap, once you can go back. 

[aceluby]

It's been both great and challenging for our family.

We moved into our new home right as stay at home orders were going through.  So we felt very fortunate that we were able to buy and sell a house before being locked down.  That part has been nice since I now have my own office that I can lock myself away in, we have room in the basement to set up a home gym, we have had plenty of time to unpack, organize, and put stuff up on walls, and there's plenty of room for our one year old to get into toddler trouble.

The tough part has been that we found out we're having a second kiddo a couple weeks before the move.  That means my wife has been sick about 50% of her waking time, which means I have to do most of the stuff around the house, help with the little one, deal w/ the animals, do all the shopping.  It's been a weird transition, but I feel like I've finally found a groove that works.  

Luckily I work for a big company that is doing pretty well despite the pandemic and I'm pretty good at my job.  I still worry about if/when our business starts to suffer what that will look like, but for now I've got some good savings in case things go south and would be fine even if I had to take a 30% pay cut.  For now, I'm trying to enjoy our little life as much as I can and am planning on using this to start working remotely on a more regular basis.  There's no reason I need to come in the office more than 3 days a week, and even when the stay at home order is lifted, I'm planning on WFH for at least a month or two after that.

[Jaxom 1974]

Well it is a weird situation here...Mrs. Jax alreadynworked from home, so that part was easy...

But being in food service at a large university? Particularly the catering department?  Whelp, my entire purpose is gone until at minimum late July, and that's really only if the DNC actually happens in person.  Otherwise it'll be slightly longer than that...all of our full time staff for all departments is on furlough now only we managers, from all departments, are working, taking turns at shifts in the one dining hall still operating for the 40 or so people still on campus.  Otherwise they're letting us work on projects at home.  Though my direct boss takes that to mean at least 5 or 6 zoom meetings a week (got one in 10 minutes) to talk about essentially the same things over and over again.  So those projects don't really get done. Starting May 9th, the entire company is apparently taking a 10% pay cut until the end of August (the end of the fiscal year).  That's also when the compelled furloughs for managers will start, though no one knows who that is going to be.  We all have to take any vacation we have before the end of August also, except for one week to be used before the end of the year. 

So yeah...there's a modicum of trepidation on some of this, particularly because the townhouse we used to have that we've been renting out now doesn't have a tenant and the sale we thought we had set up fell through because the loan program the buyer was using fell apart due to Covid.  So we're looking at a second mortgage. 

Otherwise, we're hanging in here.

[Zorral]

Partner lost his business, and it won't be coming back, and cannot get loans of any kind because the only employees were us. Also underlying medical condition.

My university is probably going to not reopen, so there' my work gone, after the end of this semester (Distance learning, which wasn't how the courses were set up). Living off savings pretty much, with the exception of this period's royalty checks for print and e and audio, as books evidently are still making sales.

Lost several very dear people out of the music and arts worlds we inhabit to It.  Seeing others starting to succumb to depression, being too elderly and having been denied an education that would even allow them to understand what is happening.  Trying to get food to them -- it's very difficult, and increasingly so.

Very small cramped space, which worked fine because partner was gone so much, and I often along -- lots of travel.  No travel now and not unlikely, ever again, for anyone except those with private means of flying, etc.  Unless there is a vaccine, which doesn't seem all that likely either.

Plus, you know the fascist coup d'état , climate crash.  We've been in isolation for going on 7 weeks now.  Not sick or even close. But 25%,* They Say, of our city has been infected. So what does that mean for us about ever going out again?  As we're, it seems, not infected. But there are no tests, so -- but we can't stay inside for the rest of our lives, can we?  Especially when we run out of money. The future looks very dark.

Update -- just saw the governor announced as of today  it's 31% .

https://gothamist.com/news/coronavirus-updates-april-28

Quote

 

2:20 p.m. An average of 31 percent of New York City residents have tested positive for coronavirus over the last 14 days, according to data presented by Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday.

Along with Long Island, which had the same testing percentage, New York City had the highest percentage of positive tests in the state. The mid-Hudson area, which includes Westchester County, had the second highest proportion of positive tests, at 28 percent.

 

 

[Zoë Sumra]

Congratulations on the expanding family, @aceluby, and best of luck to Mrs Aceluby with the sickness.

I stopped working after having DD2 (work didn't pay me enough to cover two sets of childcare at London prices). I've been child caring and writing since then. The kids' nursery is now closed - DD1 went three days a week and DD2 went one day a week. In addition, DD2 has picked this exact moment to stop napping. I've therefore lost my daytime writing slots. Everyone who knows me well will attest that I turn into a screaming ball of rage when I don't get writing time... which is not good from a stress perspective. I'm doing my best to get work done every evening, though it doesn't always happen after twelve hours with the kids.

My fencing class has shifted from once weekly in term times to twice weekly (via Zoom) with no breaks. With that plus girls plus chats from their nursery, I am, tbh, struggling with having too *much* social contact. (Introvert problems.) 

Husband is in an essential role (though his transfer to another essential role fell through due to COVID-19) so we don't have financial worries; middle class privilege of owning a house means we're doing fine in terms of outside time. DD1 in particular is very high energy and needs a lot of exercise. I have apologised to the lawn for every time I resented mowing it.

We've had a few friends have minor instances of COVID, but none hospitalised. My parents in law are sequestered in north Cornwall, in at-risk groups but healthy so far. None of us have caught it.

Nothing wrong with me personally that my anxiety pills shouldn't tackle, therefore  (doesn't everyone have existential dread?)

[Werthead]

I was working freelance when everything kicked off and for about two months beforehand anyway, so apart from losing my weekly board games night and usually a weekend day spent shopping or going out somewhere, nothing has changed too badly. I'm lucky in that I live in a house, so we have a private garden and the weather has been pretty good. I also have some exercise stuff, including a running machine, so I can get a reasonable amount of exercise without leaving the house. Food deliveries were initially a concern, but the situation has calmed somewhat and I can now get food deliveries fairly semi-reliably booked at three-week intervals.

I comfortably have enough books, video games TV shows and films to last me about five years, so no problems there.

Only major issue is that my focus on any given day is highly variable, so on one day I might be super-efficient and get tons of stuff done, and then for the next couple I get almost nothing done and am left baffled at the end of the day about what's happened, but I see that this is a pretty common feeling at the moment.

Several of my friends have had COVID-19, but they all seem to have recovered reasonably well apart from one, who was hit quite badly and is still having breathing problems and chest pains over 40 days after symptoms first appeared. She avoided hospitalisation but it sounds like it could have been close. Her accounts of her symptoms have encouraged my attempt to make sure I don't get this virus at all costs (she's younger and healthier than I am).

More concerned about my family. My mother (who is in an age range of concern, despite her excellent health) lives in Spain, although fortunately her town seems to have missed a major outbreak. They've only had one confirmed infection and no deaths. My stepmother is recovering from leukaemia and is completely immunocompromised, so she's in total, severe lockdown, especially after one of their neighbours was taken off in an ambulance with symptoms.