Life in the Cheese Drawer

i don’t think we need another soapbox about the government reaction to the coronavirus. that’s just clutter in the onlineverse.

instead, here are a few personal CV takeaways:

1. you already heard the proximity alert i’m currently under in regards to nate. bad news bears.
2. tomorrow i bring home my big imac from work to set up at home for working from home until further notice. all state employees are under orders to work from home if they are non-essential. of course, there may be times when i need to head in to campus to do some physical stuff (for instance, we are working on getting some 360º tour videos recorded and i will probably head in for those couple days). but i can do 99.9% of my job right now from home, so that’s what i guess i’m going to do. good news is that the VPN works and i’m able access all my files! (this is the “guv” part of this post from the title.)
3. this whole quarantine/isolation thing won’t be too difficult, and i can’t imagine what it’s like to live in a heavily populated area right now. i’m glad i live in the country-ish and have space.
4. i have got to stop looking at twitter and the news. an 23-hour-a-day info dump does nothing for the anxiety. during normal times, i wake up with little to no anxiety, and it slowly ramps up through the day. this is normal for me and something i just live with (i do have a prescription antihistamine/anti-anxiety pill i can take at night if it gets bad). now i wake up with that nighttime level of anxiety, and it just gets more intense as i learn more. some good news is that i think twitter has gotten over the PANIC hump and is moving into the QUARANTINE CONTENT phase.

takeaways are over, and now it’s just ramble time.

i like that because of CV, people aren’t out as much, making as much pollution. i’ve read some good things about air pollution in china being drastically reduced, which probably helps them out with getting through CV, when you think about it. fewer tourists in venice or someplace similar means clearer, cleaner water, and wildlife is coming back. maybe this will be a wake up call.

i like that even though the people of the world are hunkered down in their homes during this time, life goes on. the birds are coming back, flitting around in my trees outside, and i’m hearing bird calls that i haven’t heard in 6 months. rodents chitter and chatter at me when i get in my car in the morning to go to work. now that i won’t be driving to work, maybe the chatter will follow me as i go on a quick morning walk before sitting down at my desk at home. more birds will come, the grass will green, the froggies will fill my pond and fill the night with their songs. spring is coming.

i like that the minnesota dnr is leaving open the state parks. even though we need to stay 6′ away from each other, that doesn’t mean that we need to spend our entire lives in our homes. getting outside, breathing fresh air, being with nature and among the trees can do nothing but help, both physically and mentally.

i like that we’re at this moment where a reaction to a threat is social. to see reactions that are highly personal and interactional instead of a violent reaction is a really fascinating thing to take in, whether the reaction is extreme stocking up and isolation or going on spring break because you’re young and clueless. i’m not sure how this will end, with people being furloughed en masse and low-wage workers being paid overtime. i’m not sure if something will come from people finally seeing the value of teachers. i’m not sure that this will be the end of face-to-face education (i really doubt it). the social implications of the pandemic are bizarre. the people who get paid the most are sitting around with nothing to do while grocery store workers are considered emergency personnel.  (the former making an obscene amount of money while the latter make minimum wage.) will the value of work be examined? will healthcare get an overhaul? will “socialism” be less stigmatized? i think what may come out of this is that we learn how difficult it actually is to stay away from others and how much we do need personal interaction. we might say we live in a digital age of distancing, but we are social creatures. yes, even we introverts generally want to be closer than 6′ from others, especially people we like.

i like that my cats get to be my coworkers for the foreseeable future.

i recently read “beautiful country, burn again,” which pointed out that the US goes through a major overhaul about every 75 years (civil war, great depression). then it posits that we are at the cusp of another 75-year overhaul; this may be the trigger. while we may go back to life as we know it, it’s entirely possible that we may not. change is upon us whether we want it or not. so get outside. read that pile of books. do yoga 3x a day during your work breaks. thank your furry friends for absorbing some anxiety. live in this moment for now because we don’t know what’s coming. and stay healthy.