Social Distancing – the act of consciously keeping physical space between people to reduce close contact, to prevent the spread of infectious disease.
It is day three of Coronantine: my children’s schools are closed and my office is closed. I am working from home, trying to support a large team, take training and teach my children what a closed door means. All non-essential businesses and services are either closing, finding new ways to provide their services or, getting peer-pressured into one of the former. Toilet paper is scarce and people are panic buying… It’s :bananas:
I am feeling… weird. Schedules are disrupted. I am investing a lot of energy to check in on people remotely. My kids are mad that Mama is nearby but not available and that leads to some acting out to get my attention. That makes me feel crummy. I am also dealing with disappointment that my surgery was cancelled, indefinitely. Let’s be honest. It could be months before ORs are back to normal operating schedules. So, that sucks to have been so close to pain relief and then the finish line moved. But, it is infinitely more important that resources are redirected toward the COVID-19 outbreak and the people that actually need them urgently. Still, finding pain management strategies is a reality that I need to deal with and it’s hard with everything that’s going on.
Learning to work from home properly, in a sustainable way is real thing too. What used to be a walk to talk someone is now clicking a call button in Slack. The walk to refill my water/tea/coffee is much shorter. Here’s my list of things to do to make this WFH situation better:
- Apply virtual call etiquette and best practices.
- Every hour, move.
- Call when you can. Video conference even more.
- Take breaks to cuddle your kids/pets/plants or breathe different air.
- Be patient.
- Go collect up all your empathy and use it. With others and yourself.
This is hard. But we’re all in it together.
hoodieruns 