Friday, June 19, 2020 at 11:18AM It seems strange, but more updates to my travel blog this week - be sure to head over and check it out!
COVID-19, content, coronavirus, pandemic, travel, travel blog in 2020, Content, Updates Thursday, May 21, 2020 at 6:43PM One of the things that is getting me through the global pandemic is my constant awe of the ways people are adapting to it all. While it may have been the case a few weeks ago that everyone was re-watching High School Musical and touting "we're all in this together", even the most health conscious of us have had our own personal moments straight out of Lord of the Flies as we head into Memorial Day weekend.
Having been a social-distancer myself, I also made the decision rather early on to spend the main part of the pandemic quarantining with my family. I'm not usually one to suffer from anxiety, and have honestly never really had issues with being alone, but I realized pretty quickly that this situation is entirely different. There's a difference between being okay (and happy!) living alone and living alone and not talking to anyone (in person) but a grocery store checkout clerk or a takeout delivery person for weeks at a time (team meetings over video-chat during work hours does not take the place of face-to-face interaction for long periods of time, at least not for me). In the end, this has even shifted my stance on remote working - it's never been something I clamored for pre-COVID, but there are certain joys to working out of my apartment, or in the case currently, being able to literally pack up my office and take it with me with no worries regarding productivity. The only let-down so far? Not having an actual office to help with the blurry line of work/life separation remote working sometimes brings - something that I hope going into 2021 will change for the better ;)
COVID-19, coronavirus, working remotely in 2020, Content, Updates Monday, March 30, 2020 at 8:29PM And so the PA exile begins! I said in my last post, I was waiting out my own two week quarantine before heading out to spend the coronavirus with my mom in Pennsylvania. I'm struck by the fact that it's only been about 48 hours since I've been here and my mood has already lifted immensely. As much as I'm an extroverted introvert, those two weeks living alone were eye-opening; I think my sigh of relief as I sat down in my mom's living room could be felt across the country, if such a thing were measurable.
It really is true what many medical talking heads having been saying - check in on your neighbors and friends. It's never been more clear to me how much you can rely on human contact in your everyday life until it's taken away from you. I've never really considered myself to be someone who struggles with huge amounts of anxiety, but I think it's times like these that make you realize how essential it is to have a support system. I have never once considered myself to be alone because I always had my family or friends to lean back on - but there are a lot of people out there now who may be realizing that they don't have the same.
Since my mom moved out of our family home three years ago, she's been honest about trying to make her new home in Pennsylvania become a new space where both my sister and I feel comfortable. I think the nicest thing she's said to me since I got here was that she's just happy I feel like I could come here during a high period of stress and feel welcome. Maybe that's what is sticking with me - that there may be people out there during this time who don't have a place or a person they can turn to that gives them the feeling of home. I can't imagine living through a global pandemic without that - I was even thinking that I'm lucky to have another place outside my own home that makes me feel not so alone.
COVID-19, PA Exile 2020, coronavirus, home in 2020 Tuesday, March 17, 2020 at 6:41PM As I'm now one of the many people internationally working from home due to the threat of COVID-19, it's giving me an eye-opening perspective on the state of the digital workspace. While there are many articles and opinions out there written by people either much more intelligent or much more well-informed than me (and in some cases probably both), as someone who usually dislikes working from home, I figured it was the perfect time to throw my own hat into the ring.
Now I know there are conspiracy theorists out there who take our currently social distancing situation as the first step on the way to the humanity presented in the Disney movie Wall-E - that of a dystopian future where the human race is more concerned with the face on the screen rather than the face right next to them. While personally I'm not quite to that level of panic yet (albeit I'm only two days in to my social distancing), the way most of the world was able to shift to a virtual workplace was something that would not have been possible at this scale even fifteen years ago. That bears the question - is all of this just leading to a future populated by jobs at home rather than in a physical workplace? I hope not. As I mentioned earlier, I'm probably in the minority in that I dislike working remotely if I have the choice of going into the office; as much as I'm an introverted extrovert, I really do like having a separation between my work and home life and truly believe it usually helps my overall productivity and mental health.
Personally, it seems to me that humanity as a whole does not do well with absolute solitude for long periods of time (all you have to do is Google "solitary confinement" and the internet will provide). Seeing coworkers face-to-face is something expected and normal in this day and age, but with the onset of technology such as Skype/Teams/Uber, the argument against shifting from a physical workplace to a virtual one isn't completely unheard of, with a lot of people wanting to take advantage of the benefits from not having to go into the office every day.
But what happens if the situation that forces mass situations of working from home is a due to a global pandemic? Being able to continue working within this situation is great for a majority of people (myself included), but what happens when some of that population become isolated from everyone but the face on the screen or the voice on the phone? That's when the downside of a completely virtual workspace can set in. I currently live by myself in a pretty populated apartment complex in New Jersey. On a normal day, I go to work where I interact with a group of 30-odd people, and then make my way home where I usually interact with another handful of people where I live. I'm now in the situation where I last interacted with an actual person nearly a full two days ago. I'm not completely isolated, mind you - the amount of contact I've had with coworkers, friends and family has been at what I would consider my normal level (and in some cases higher) - but it's all been through a screen or phone. Physical isolation is still isolation, and even for an introverted extrovert such as myself, I can't say I'll be completely comfortable with the situation if it continues like this for weeks at a time. With that being said, social distancing is now the best way of stopping the spread of the virus, and I'm practicing it now as the closest family member that I could stay with would fall under the bracket of being more at risk to the virus than I am, if I'm a carrier.
Like I said earlier, as much as my generation has a love of dystopian futures / may be a bit fatalist at times, I don't think we're quite at the level to start naming our kids Katniss and Peta. But if this tells me anything, although the idea you can work remotely is more of a possibility now for those in a digital industry, it may not be the best for long periods of time. Our overall level of digital saturation is not quite yet at the point where the world of Wall-E is our destiny, but it does make me wonder how much closer COVID-19 has pushed us in that overall direction.