COVID19 Thoughts Part 1

All right people - probably I should write down some of my COVID19 thoughts so that I can look back on them in a few years once some of the memories start to fade.  One thing I find very fascinating about the whole thing is the opportunity to analyze data and watch graphs and trends, etc.  But I'll save that for a different post.

I know COVID19 started in the world in China back in December 2019 or January 2020, and they spent their 2020 Chinese New Year on lockdown.  And in February I had some colleagues travel to Italy only to arrive, turn around, and get back on a plane because of the COVID19 outbreak in Milan.  Then they had to quarantine for two weeks when they returned to the U.S.  But for me, my COVID19 experience begins in mid-March.  My in-person Six Sigma training in Colorado was cancelled in March due to COVID19 (work had already restricted all travel), but I still decided to go and see my older sister in Wyoming as I had planned when I was going to dovetail onto my training trip.  Before I left work that Friday, we were told that we should all plan to work from home temporarily due to COVID19.  At the time I was figuring that might last for a couple weeks.

The plan for the long weekend was to fly to Denver, spend a couple days in south central Wyoming, and then drive to Jackson Hole to spend a couple days skiing.  Despite some slight misgivings about travelling with a virus starting to spread, I went.  As we were about an hour out of Laramie heading for Jackson Hole, we got notification that Jackson Hole had closed for the season due to COVID19, so back to Laramie we went.  Once we made a surprise visit to some friends for supper and found a place to stay on short notice, my sister's co-worker got news late that evening that her brother had passed away, so my sister and her co-worker took off in the middle of the night to head to Montana.  Flexibility was the name of the game that trip.  I booked a new ticket, relied on the kindness of friends to get back to the Denver airport, and headed home.

I started working from home on Tuesday March 17th.  I spent that week working on my laptop from the kitchen table, and after 4 days I decided that was for the birds.  I snuck into work on Sunday and got my monitors, cordless headset, keyboard, mouse, etc.  Luckily I did because on the evening of Monday March 23rd the governor put us on stay at home order until sometime in June.  Luckily I was one of the "Level 1" employees who could go into work for business critical work starting in April and May, but I still spent the majority of my time at home.  I spent 11+ weeks working from home.  I spent 10 weeks under stay at home order.  During that time the only time I saw other people was usually when I went to the grocery store, Lowe's, or Home Depot.  One person from my meeting came and visited me a couple times to work on a building project (more on that later).  From those 11 weeks, here are some thoughts.

Pros

• My office view was great
• Good opportunity to learn more about my food allergies since I was eating every meal at home
• Learning all the hiking trails around my house
• Learning about the birds and other wildlife around my house
• 2 weeks of furlough
• Quietness
• God is not limited by our circumstances

Cons

• Loneliness.  It may even be accurate to apply the adjective terrible to that word.
• No face-to-face interaction with people
• Did not touch another human being for more than 11 weeks.  I'm not a very touchy feely person, but after a few weeks even I started to notice the absence of even the simple touches like a handshake after Bible study.
• Did not hear another person pray for more than 11 weeks.  I didn't really notice how special this privilege was until it returned.
• 2 weeks of furlough (both a blessing and a curse)
• Very special vacation to Hawaii and Kwajelein was cancelled
• Cancelled robotics competitions
• Monthly Six Sigma training going from in-person to online  (more than a year later, it's still virtual).
• No fellowship meetings on Sunday or Wednesday with other people.

After this experience, I think many people could probably see why isolation is considered the most severe punishment in the American prison system.  One of my saving graces was having a job that kept me busy and had some video conference calls during most of that time (except the weeks of furlough).  Usually Friday evenings were the worst.  I was exiting a week a stress from a job and loneliness and staring at another long weekend of loneliness.  In June of 2020, I reflected on how those 11 weeks changed me.  Here is what I wrote at the time:

• I learned to more frequently cry desperately to the Lord.  And to become more familiar with that feeling.
• I started to feel a more deep need for God each day.
• I learned how to sit and wait (a little better) to try to understand what the Lord wanted me to learn and/or share.  There's definitely more that could be learned there.
• I've always known I had a creative side or maybe I should say a need to create.  COVID19 showed me that it has a very big desire to be expressed.  When I was doing more designing of circuit boards and less reviewing of others' work, I think that was easily satisfied.  Now that I lead and teach and review others' work, the creative and creation side needs other outlets like drawing, constructing, or doing things like playing music.
• I temporarily forgot how to laugh sometimes.  I didn't lose my sense of humor , but when I spent most of my days alone, it was easy to get engrossed in my serious thoughts, serious work, etc.
• I can now appreciate taking a walk by myself.  It's still not my preferred exercise mode, but it'll do in a pinch.
• I realized how good it is to have an evening without an agenda or activity.  And how needful it is to have some evenings with an agenda, but not all evenings to be packed full.  I'm sure this lesson will not always be followed in the future, especially during robotics season.
• It will take us as much time to re-adjust post COVID19 as it did for us to adjust to COVID19 in the first place.

When we first started this "stay at home" stuff, I thought about how it was giving everybody a taste of someone else's life.  Woikas were staying in one place and knowing what it feels like to feel "stuck" somewhere.  Friends were having their lives feeling very uncertain and out of their control, kind of like woikas might often feel.  All of us now know what it might be like to be retired and feel more isolated or to be a "shut-in".  All of us now realize that some of those things on our "to-do" list that never get done are there not because we don't have the time, but simply because we don't want to do them.  It was a good experience to help us all empathize.  It also makes me realize how fortunate we are to have technology where we can talk to someone in almost real time.  Back in the day when people lived out on the prairie in North Dakota, you had to send a letter and probably wait months to hear from your family in another country.

I read an article that called the whole stay at home experience "The Great Pause".  It thought that was an apt description.  That's all for now.  Next time I'll cover more of the period from June of 2020 to June of 2021.  And then Part 3 maybe we'll get into some data analysis.

Here was my office during that time.  It got pretty sunny in the late afternoon and required sunglasses on some days.