I've been away for almost a year. And what a year it has been. Everyone around the world is experiencing COVID-19 through their own lens. What is also quite surprising is that now I (and it seems most other steem token holders) also own a share of HIVE. While I don't understand the politics, I am quite pleasantly surprised that both tokens have value in the in the marketplace so that must be good news.
Crypto-politics aside, what have I been doing to keep myself busy at home. For the most part, working at home has been great for making a great relationship with my daughters. The kids get to see their dad whenever they want to. The negative, well, they get to call for their dad whenever they want to...
I've moved around the house to find a place that is most conducive for working from home. First I used the bedroom, but then I felt that I should leave the sanctuary of the bedroom (home) sacred. It was quite comfortable there though. That lasted about a week. Then I moved down to the living room. As the living room area is the main area for everyone in the house, it receives a lot of presence. It becomes quite a distraction. Then I went into the basement. I don't really have a fancy set up in the basement, but I was able to cobble together a desk and a chair. The chair is a standard dining room chair and not even a work chair. And I found an old lamp in the storage area. I also went out to Staples and ordered a monitor so that I can work in a dual screen mode to mimic the work environment. Since then, that has become my work space.
(It's a messy little space, but it's my workspace for now.)
Depending on how long this pandemic will last, I may have to upgrade the chair and other work materials to make it more comfortable.
When we first entered the pandemic and shutdown here in the USA (around the 3rd week of March 2020), it was an uneasy time. I wasn't quite sure how working from home would be like. Occasionally, I would take a day here and a day there to work from home. It was rarely a career-enjoying experience at that time because WFH wasn't a culture that widely accepted by the industry that I am in and certainly not the company itself. The pandemic changed all of that. We had to work from home and make it work. And make it work we did. Every members of the team figured out how best to work. Some choose to do in their homes, while others rent a place near the beach or other "vacation-like" area to work. And senior management recognizes the value of WFH, one out of necessity as well as the well-being and satisfaction of the employees. While I think we will have to get back into the office at some point, WFH will play a part of our work culture going forward.
It is important to take breaks at work to socialize with your co-workers and for me, just to get my eyes away from the screen. The place to do that was the water cooler and the breakroom. No longer in that atmosphere, I had to alter for the home work environment. My break time now is walking around the outside perimeter of my home, checking out my garden and picking weeds of all things. I would have to say that I am most proud of this year is my garden and how little weeds there are (without the use of harmful pesticides).
With so much time that got freed up as a result of not having to commute, I put it to good use in a relaxing way. Just so that you know, normal daily commute time for me ranges from two to three hours per day combined. That's the equivalence of 12.5% of the total available hours in a day - quite significant. What I've spent that time on is in my garden.
It is relaxing and rewarding to see the garden transition from the late winter month, into the spring, and now the middle of summer. With not many places to go and things to do, it provides a nice oasis.
At times, I wonder if we have too many plants now. The pictures above show additional pepper plants that we have put in pots in the garden. They got eaten by the deers so we had to move them closer to the house to avoid them totally killed.
We even managed to grow several watermelon plants. They're still small, about the size of a kid's basketball. Hopefully, they continue to develop and we will have some nice homegrown watermelons to eat in the fall.
The main vegetable garden is also performing nicely, except that deers come occasionally and eat all of the new leaves. We didn't want to put up any fences and tried other methods of keeping them away.
We are lucky to have space around the house to keep busy through this pandemic. But at the end of the day, I am really lucky to have this time to spend with my two little monsters. They are especially resilient. I feel sad for them that they aren't able to play with other kids their age or go see their cousins on a regular basis, but they've been managing really well.
We have even managed to put together a few videos in the early days of the pandemic to chronologize the experience:
Work-from-home:
Getting a haircut:
Going out during a pandemic:
Short video that we never finished of not being able to say "bye" for school:
Thanks for reading thus far. This post has gotten quite lengthy and I have a lot more to say. I will leave it for another day. But in a nutshell, those are the things that I remember so far about life at home during the pandemic.
I wish you a good day!