Two weeks have passed since I last saw the faces of my colleagues and friends, when we were all communicated to about policies insisting that all employees work from home. The virus posed a threat to spread really fast. There were fears that it can spread through air, even. It was no longer allowed to have meetings with people in closed conference room spaces, or roll your chair over to your co-worker’s desk and talk. Every cough, sneeze and sniffle were seen as a threat to the atmosphere around which they walked around.
I predicted that we would work remote for at least until the end of April, which adds up to 6 weeks. Currently though, the end seems no where in sight.
At first I welcomed the change, enthusiastic about setting my own work station at home with the company monitor. We actually did the panic buying in advance of the rise of the pandemic, as the news was starting to look more grim by the day. I had plans of spending time on personal development. Completing that AWS certification training, yoga everyday, prepping for job interviews, and the list went on.
By that weekend though, the panic buying had set in. Most grocery stores reported how their stocks were wiped clean. Doomsday prepping and apocalypse were trending. How Americans thought this could never affect them, may be their neighbor but not “them”, or that they trusted their leader to figure out the logistics to prevent the rise and spread. I believe that the people made wrong assumptions. It couldn’t affect the millennials, it was even deemed a “boomer-remover” virus. I suspect that the virus seemed too fictitious to affect those with strong healthy bodies. I know that at some point I’d like to think I was one of them too.
Work-from-home fatigue had set in. Work never seemed to be finished for the day. Corporate culture inexplicably expected us to be “available” throughout the day. There seems to be an unspoken word about how working remote deems one to be under the employer’s disposition. Somehow all the goals I wanted to accomplish, and all the time I “thought” I had for it, but never felt motivated enough.
Anxiety had set in. The apartment suddenly felt too small for the two of us. I’m fortunate enough that between my husband and I, we do everything for each other and never “take turns” doing the laundry, cooking or the cleaning. But we are both feeling the stress. Our world suddenly seems upside down.
The first thing that comes to mind when I wake is the pandemic. The images of those unfortunate affected by it, the front-line health care workers and their dystopian quarantine scrubs. Supposedly, a pandemic such as this occurs every 100 years or so, but you’d think that humanity had conquered everything, now that we are already living in the future. To think that humans are fighting an invisible enemy that does not care about anyone’s race, color, financial power or health, and yet humanity does not have a solution to eradicate it. To think that healthcare was so advanced that there were machine learning models to predict every possible malaise that could occur in the world, but has failed tremendously.
The citizens of the world are already feeling the effects of the falling economy. Poverty is going to strike and there will be anarchy. It does not help that Americans have access to arms and there is no gun control in place. And a buffoon of a President still continues to make blunders upon blunders of political, environmental and human damage of herculean proportions.
Social distancing is suddenly the new norm. It almost feels shameful to want to go stand close to another human being. Sometimes it feels as if we lived in a different time, when people met other folks, crowded around clubs and concerts, and the stores were always excessively stocked with supplies. Could we ever go back to before?
March has felt like an era in itself.
But the faith in humanity never ceases to amaze me. We function as a clan. When the need arises, we empathize with our fellow humans. The attitude that we need to adapt to is one of neighborly love. To provide selflessly and remind ourselves that we came in to this world with nothing and that we will leave with nothing. Sapiens have risen from even debilitating disasters. Hope has never failed us.
Blurry Wishes... 