How is everybody holding up? We're almost at the 3 month mark of this COVID-19 social distancing order. I've been using Friday the 13th of March 2020 as my marker for the last typical day. My kids were in school that day. My youngest spent the day in daycare. I was working at home alone that day for 8 hours. 8 whole hours alone! Heck, I even had a visitor.
That first week of social distancing was the March Break, and I watched a lot of CBC News Network. Everything seemed to be happening... and it got in my head. There were nights that week I went to bed convinced I had COVID-19. That scratch in the back of my throat? That's gotta be it. I had my wife take my temperature twice because I thought I was burning up. Both times I was as cool as the other side of the pillow. I was ready to move into the basement to self-quarantine myself for 14 days.
Then, by the third week, I was back to checking in on the news as normal. Not coincidentally, I stopped thinking I was sick. In fact, other than a broken wrist at the end of March, I've felt pretty great these past few months. Physically, at least.
I'll go for a ride and listen to a podcast and hear the host joke about all the free time everybody suddenly has. The other day I heard hosts joking about reading War and Peace because if you don't have time now you'll never have time. I couldn't relate at all.
I've never had less free time. This is entirely the result of the 4 and 6 year olds being home 100% of the time. My wife is still working full-time from home, with frequent business calls and virtual meetings. Meanwhile, I'm doing my very best to keep TMDS going and producing as much compelling podcast content as possible. So my wife and I play this game where we take our respeciive full schedules and try and figure out who's watching the little ones throughout the day. We sort of take shifts. The end result is less free time than ever.
Having written that, I should point out there's typically a family walk every evening after dinner, and I try to escape for a bike ride every day. All six of us have bought in on the social distancing so my teens aren't getting within two metres of their friends and I'm always masked when I pick up groceries, fabric and whatever else I'm asked to collect for the family. We just live our lives as if every person we don't live with has COVID-19.
So physically I'm feeling great, but otherwise I'm exhausted!
I'm lucky that half the time I live with five others and the other half of the time I live with three others. There's literally never a dull moment, and I never feel lonely. I'd imagine this would be far more difficult for someone who lives alone.
How are you holding up?
