I am sitting outside on the Sunday before the start of another week of semi-isolation, and figured I should capture some non sequitur thoughts I have had from the previous week or so dealing with the coronoavirus and working from home:
- First, it feels very much like Hurricane Sandy. On Long Island when Sandy hit it became a hoarder mentality with people stocking up on items that may or may not be useful in the coming weeks. I haven’t seen real price gouging happen just yet but it is early, and apparently toilet paper is going to be worth more than oil this time around.
- Businesses have been hit hard, and we are early into all of this! I have heard of multiple friends and friends of friends surviving, or not surviving major layoffs as businesses have streamlined or completely shut down. The restaurant industry is completely, and utterly, fucked. Which leads to all the waitresses, waiters and bartenders and there are a ton of them on Long Island and NYC, having a suddenly lower (or no) income. This leads to the restaurateur/owner having less or no money to pay rent which leads to the landlord taking a hit…and so on and so on.
- If you told me 20 years ago when I started dating The Wife on St. Patty’s Day that I would be in our third house with 2 kids running around, and that we are basically are locked in our house for (hopefully only) 2 weeks but who the hell knows, I may not believed you on any of it! But there we were trying to make St. Patty’s day special for us and the kids with The Wife’s dad’s Irish Stew recipe and Irish music that went beyond Drop Kick Murphy’s.
- Almost every night at 8pm from the time we got our new dog (May of 2018 I believe) she has been a huge pain the ass. The Wife and I would say that she is almost looking for trouble, going after pillows, blankets, kids’ toys, etc. This past week? Zero problems! The difference? She has been outside/exercised triple, if not quadruple the time every, single day.
- I am truly lucky to have my current job. Throughout this whole thing I have not thought, what if I get let go? It could absolutely happen! I am not an inexpensive employee to keep on payroll, but in the past 2 weeks or so I have not thought about my job being on the chopping block. This could change over the next week or two, but we’ll see.
- I have been way too lax when it comes to building up other streams of income. While I am thankful for my other two streams of income (online world that I don’t talk about a lot and my tiny law practice) I have not been actively trying to open any other new streams of income. This situation has reopened my eyes that this has to change. If part of the world ends I need to be able to rely on income from somewhere else.
- I miss brewing. For the past 4 or 5 years I have been brewing a lot, but for some reason last 6 to 9 months the production has basically halted. I have a feeling it has to do with my recent move and logistics of brewing. Notwithstanding that is going to change! Without having to commute and a lot of face time with my kids, I should be able to get one or two brew sessions next week which I am excited about!
- Our move mid last year was the right one! The Son and Daughter have played outside more in the past week than I could have ever imagined. We taught The Daughter how to ride a bike last week and we haven’t been able to keep her off of it. The Son has played a ridiculous amount of knock out this past week, and I was even kind of excited for him to push the boundaries of where he could ride to (for future Evan: it was around the block in a full circle).
- With so many people working virtually, I am not entirely sure what the future looks like for a lot of jobs! Do offices find out who/what is actually necessary?
- The early retirement crowd is about to get a rude awakening with the marketing crumbling in front of their eyes. Notwithstanding, being home the past week I kind of get the draw of possibly controlling more of time in the future.
- I have some pretty fantastic friends in my life. Some of those relationships are decades in the making and some are just a few years.
- My kids and The Wife are the best. They really are! Given all the shit that is going on in the world it is nice to know that we all can be home playing board games with almost no complaining and fighting.
I am sure I’ll come up with more as the week goes on!
