Hmmm
I've been meaning to journal, or at least record thoughts, for a long time, and having seen some other friends make conscious decisions to do so during this pandemic made me think I should try to. Which I promptly didn't do. But I'm here now?
Things have been very, very strange. I work and live in residence at a university and just about two weeks ago now the university made the decision to send all of the students home for the rest of the semester and transition to remote/distance learning. We are by no means the only ones to do so, but it is still a strange thing. I actually knew in advance that this would happen (not much advance, mind), but that didn't actually help all that much since it's not like I could tell anyone. My actually-pays-me job ground to a complete standstill for two reasons: 1) I had to help my own students process the announcement and the fact that they needed to pack up and leave in less than a week and 2) I shifted to help students across the university with the logistics of getting home, which meant mostly sitting in dining halls helping them book flights and answering questions that I had no answers to, because information kept being updated. Pretty much all of my colleagues also shifted to some form of helping-everyone-else, too. On the plus side, our work can, in this moment at least, pause like that with no harm done. Starting back up is a different story.
I went into work on Monday, but worked remotely for the rest of the week. We've been doing twice-daily virtual check-ins, mostly to stay connected rather than actually track what needs to be done. I actually don't mind it as much as I thought I would. That said, I am getting increasingly frustrated with my boss, which is not new but certainly being exacerbated by being thrown out of the office's usual routine. I need to really sit down and think about how to manage these new circumstances, since I believe we're officially working remotely until further notice. Yesterday evening I stopped by my office to get my monitors and docking station, since working on just my laptop wasn't doing it for me. I don't have a very large table on which to place these things, so I may downgrade to just one monitor (I usually use two), but time will tell.
My next task, and I hope to get myself to do it tomorrow, is to put together a proposed schedule. I suspect that I am not well-built for working from home, and I know that have a schedule, or at the very least a routine, will help a lot. Our morning check in is at 10am, so on weekdays I at least have to be up and dressed by 9:45 so I'm ready for that. I made myself get out of bed at 9:45 this morning, despite my usual tendency to sleep in on the weekends, because I knew I'd never get up. I've also made an effort to open the curtains in my bedroom, both for the light and for the act of getting up, which makes me make my bed (I'm already in the habit of making my bed daily). I've also been trying to be in bed by 11-11:30pm every evening, to make getting up in the morning easier. Weekends will be difficult, since I'm both in the habit of waking up late and also staying up late.
None of this is helped, of course, by the fact that I brought my car in for necessary service on Thursday, found out they had to completely replace a 1-year-old tire because it was unfixable (turns out I drove over a screw and it punctured the sidewall), needed my brakes done, the drivebelt replaced, and that they were going to re-do the air conditioning thing they did in October to check for leaks (my fault, I didn't go back after two weeks like I should have, but still annoying). This was on top of the inspection and oil change I needed anyway. All-in-all I dropped $1200 on it. Then. THEN! I ran errands yesterday and my tire pressure indicator light was on, so I went to get air and one tire was low. The brand-spanking-new tire, to be clear. Short version, I went back this morning and something-something there's a system that can cause leaks and it wasn't an issue with the tire itself, but rather that system and it would be $200 to fix. Not terrible, except I asked them to take a look at the AC again, if possible, to see if the dye they injected showed anything/they could actually diagnose the problem. Well, turns out the compressor needs replacing and that will be $1000. So...I'm in unexpectedly in the market for a new car, because between the work I got done on Thursday and this new $1200 quote, that's pretty much equal to the actual value of my car (it's 10+ years old), so not worth doing. But I refuse to not have air conditioning in the summer, and judging by spring, this summer's going to be brutal. I'm in a fine enough place financially to be able to afford this, particularly since there are some decent deals since no one is going out of the house right now, but I hadn't planned on needing to do this for another year or two, so I haven't done any research. I spent this evening looking at cars, trying to decide if I want another of the car I already have or not. I have an appointment on Monday to test drive some Toyotas, so we'll see how that goes. Argh. Not something I wanted to be doing right now.
Things have been very, very strange. I work and live in residence at a university and just about two weeks ago now the university made the decision to send all of the students home for the rest of the semester and transition to remote/distance learning. We are by no means the only ones to do so, but it is still a strange thing. I actually knew in advance that this would happen (not much advance, mind), but that didn't actually help all that much since it's not like I could tell anyone. My actually-pays-me job ground to a complete standstill for two reasons: 1) I had to help my own students process the announcement and the fact that they needed to pack up and leave in less than a week and 2) I shifted to help students across the university with the logistics of getting home, which meant mostly sitting in dining halls helping them book flights and answering questions that I had no answers to, because information kept being updated. Pretty much all of my colleagues also shifted to some form of helping-everyone-else, too. On the plus side, our work can, in this moment at least, pause like that with no harm done. Starting back up is a different story.
I went into work on Monday, but worked remotely for the rest of the week. We've been doing twice-daily virtual check-ins, mostly to stay connected rather than actually track what needs to be done. I actually don't mind it as much as I thought I would. That said, I am getting increasingly frustrated with my boss, which is not new but certainly being exacerbated by being thrown out of the office's usual routine. I need to really sit down and think about how to manage these new circumstances, since I believe we're officially working remotely until further notice. Yesterday evening I stopped by my office to get my monitors and docking station, since working on just my laptop wasn't doing it for me. I don't have a very large table on which to place these things, so I may downgrade to just one monitor (I usually use two), but time will tell.
My next task, and I hope to get myself to do it tomorrow, is to put together a proposed schedule. I suspect that I am not well-built for working from home, and I know that have a schedule, or at the very least a routine, will help a lot. Our morning check in is at 10am, so on weekdays I at least have to be up and dressed by 9:45 so I'm ready for that. I made myself get out of bed at 9:45 this morning, despite my usual tendency to sleep in on the weekends, because I knew I'd never get up. I've also made an effort to open the curtains in my bedroom, both for the light and for the act of getting up, which makes me make my bed (I'm already in the habit of making my bed daily). I've also been trying to be in bed by 11-11:30pm every evening, to make getting up in the morning easier. Weekends will be difficult, since I'm both in the habit of waking up late and also staying up late.
None of this is helped, of course, by the fact that I brought my car in for necessary service on Thursday, found out they had to completely replace a 1-year-old tire because it was unfixable (turns out I drove over a screw and it punctured the sidewall), needed my brakes done, the drivebelt replaced, and that they were going to re-do the air conditioning thing they did in October to check for leaks (my fault, I didn't go back after two weeks like I should have, but still annoying). This was on top of the inspection and oil change I needed anyway. All-in-all I dropped $1200 on it. Then. THEN! I ran errands yesterday and my tire pressure indicator light was on, so I went to get air and one tire was low. The brand-spanking-new tire, to be clear. Short version, I went back this morning and something-something there's a system that can cause leaks and it wasn't an issue with the tire itself, but rather that system and it would be $200 to fix. Not terrible, except I asked them to take a look at the AC again, if possible, to see if the dye they injected showed anything/they could actually diagnose the problem. Well, turns out the compressor needs replacing and that will be $1000. So...I'm in unexpectedly in the market for a new car, because between the work I got done on Thursday and this new $1200 quote, that's pretty much equal to the actual value of my car (it's 10+ years old), so not worth doing. But I refuse to not have air conditioning in the summer, and judging by spring, this summer's going to be brutal. I'm in a fine enough place financially to be able to afford this, particularly since there are some decent deals since no one is going out of the house right now, but I hadn't planned on needing to do this for another year or two, so I haven't done any research. I spent this evening looking at cars, trying to decide if I want another of the car I already have or not. I have an appointment on Monday to test drive some Toyotas, so we'll see how that goes. Argh. Not something I wanted to be doing right now.