Would you please stop the karma-farming spam schemes? You're wasting your time. We ban such accounts and the sites that they try to promote here, and karma doesn't help.
Dang, I feel like I am missing something and cannot make much sense out of your comment even after rereading it multiple times. Is this about the submission itself? Or something else? Would you be kind and expand a bit on it?
There's a bit of survivorship bias in there because a lot of such posts go nowhere. But the community does respond strongly to opportunities to personally share. The main reason it works, though, is that it's relatively uncommon. If it were a big slice of the pie people would get bored and complain.
I am entirely sure that I have moderate-serious depression since the lock down started. I rely entirely on external structure and physical separation of spaces to keep myself sane. So WFH has been disastrous for me.
I have been eating worse, not working out, stopped pursuing hobbies/side projects and have been incredibly unproductive at work. Thankfully, a year of good results prior to this, has helped build a lot of goodwill I can burn through.
For the first time the current social climate has affected me severely too. My parents city is among the worst affected by Covid, and both my 80 yr old grandparents stay there. My anti-tribal-free-speech-absolutist and pro-equality-altruistic self have put me in a moral crisis as the BLM movement has picked up. Then today morning my favorite blog closed because of an attack by cancel-police. My country is on the cusp of actual war. I also spilled my coffee twice in the last 2 days and that makes me irrationally frustrated.
On the bright side, I have no suicidal thoughts. None of my relationships have been destroyed (yet). I still have my job and I know the cause of my current state is temporary. I've started therapy, which should start helping any moment now. Covid has affected people in worse ways, so I'm quietly trudging along.
Worst 3 month period of my life outside the one time I was depressed + alone . Now I am just depressed.
It never ceases to amaze me how different people are. For me, all effects have been the exact opposite. Less going out, so more cooking and healthier eating. Less tired from open office noise, so more energy for sports. More free time without commute, so I picked up some long forgotten hobbies again.
This means my advice might not apply to you, but if I may still recommend one thing: ignore most of the news for a while. The sensationalism can get infectious. There won't be anything deserving of the name war in your country (the US, I assume).
I actually feel a lil guilty about how well things are going for me. Its not really been any change for me, same schedule - same job. I think the key is as you said, mostly avoiding the news. Every day or two, I skim over the headlines on CNN but mostly I avoid it. I do check the stock market in the mornings - I swear the DJIA is just a yo-yo. But it's just out of curiosity as I still have 15+ years before I can retire...So not stressing about it even on bad days.
I think previously, I was just way too wrapped up in the news cycles.
Agree 100%. I've felt a little guilty too. I started working from home full time about 4 months before covid landed in US. I'd built a nice above garage office. Kids homeschooled already. Planted a garden that's doing well, had more time for home projects, etc. I have friends not doing so well. I have donated to individuals and organizations since I feel I have an obligation to help people in need.
News is the biggest drag on my mental well being. It is important to be informed, but I genuinely feel that media is so driven by ad revenue and has optimized itself into being as negative and outrageous and _loud_ as possible, to the detriment of sane balanced information and opinion. I need to know the sides of current issues, but not loudly 24x7 with as much vitriol on all sides. I blocked several news sites and social media I habitually check in my hosts file, but somehow my browser still resolves the names. I need to fix that.
HackerNews is really one of the few sites I can expect to find calm reasoned discussion and information.
>I blocked several news sites and social media I habitually check in my hosts file, but somehow my browser still resolves the names. I need to fix that.
HN is about the extent of my social media...
I always found the signal-to-noise ratio of facebook, twitter, etc. to be too low to make them worthwhile.
On the other hand, I can spend hours sucked into random tech books, blogs, etc. So I guess time wise it balances out.
Same here. I do daily exercise now since I don't have to waste 3 hours every day commuting. I'm spending more quality time with family. It just feels that I have more time to do more things. I'm also more productive at doing my work for whatever reason.
But, I see anxiety and depression around me and I'm talking about people that didn't had a bad economic or job impact. It's just uncertainty and insecurity that breaks people. I try to support them.
Try to be creative with your time. Take it easier and have fun with your family. Don't stick to social media because it fills your day with negative content and disappointment. And don't waste your time with Youtube and Netflix because deep down you will feel pointless if you do that. And speak up and share your pain with others.
Also remember this is not the end of world.
It only has been a few months and the amount of uncertainty, pain, and insecurity that you feel right now is million times less than what people have to deal for many years in some countries with civil war, sanctions, dictatorships. And they are holding up. So don't suddenly feel that you living in the worst time ever. We have everything needed to overcome this.
It's obviously different for different people and it's easy to give advice. I also know people that lost someone which makes it much harder. Don't stay alone and find something that motivates you.
Although it’s easy to give advice, in this case yours is very valuable. I’m trying to follow the work out every day thing too, bringing in my family for it too.
I feel like the traditional office/working culture is built around extroverts and not compatible for introverts, since extroverts value face to face conversations and feel stimulated and prefer the open office and other noises.
This change made introverts more comfortable, because all the other distractions are gone. I feel the same way like you do, I have more time and I was able to improve my daily life.
Like anything, the introvert/extrovert dichotomy is actually more like a scale. Few people are entirely on one end or the other.
I can generally prefer personal time and a quiet place to mull my thoughts, but at the same time miss the spontaneous discussion and emotional attachment that an office provides.
This has been the number 1 thing that I've started doing recently that has improved my mental health. I've been incredibly depressed and anxious this year, and realized how much of that has been tied to the news cycle. I've mostly ignored the news for about a week now, and I'm feeling much better. I still have an underlying current of anxiety that I need to deal with, but overall I'm feeling better.
Rather than reading the news constantly, I ended up subscribing to the print edition of The Economist, so I'll read that once a week rather than constantly flipping over to Google News every hour.
I don't think theres that much of a difference. Most of the people who're doing well are staying at home with a partner or family and have a healthy relationship.
I can't imagine anyone in my situation of being cut off from almost all human contact (young+single+alone) for 4 months being "better than ever".
I too was having a pretty decent time, setting up an apartment I’d moved into right before the pandemic hit my city.
Then recently I traveled and stayed with my GF for three weeks, and now she is here for two weeks, and I’m more tired than ever.
After this my parents will want me to visit, but I will be taking some time to myself in between and have asked my girlfriend to go home a week early.
I want to get back into my nice routine of waking up and making coffee and breakfast and working out, and reading before bed, and working on personal projects after work.
I fear, as much as I like her that she may be far less independent than I am. And it’s a bit troubling. But for now I am just looking forward to being on my own again for a while.
I do miss the office though, I had a nice ten minute walking commute although am happy to be less distracted at work.
It’s all ups and downs really.
I hope GP and everyone else adversely affected by this comes out strong on the other side and is able to receive the help they need or overcome the challenges they face. We’ve all got them, but it’s just different magnitudes on different dimensions of an incredibly complex space.
And spilling my coffee twice would give me a conniption! It’s locally roasted organic gosh darn it!
The last thing China needs right now is another hit to its GDP, which would be quite substantial if it was subjected to similar international sanctions as Russia was for its actions in Ukraine.
India is actually being quite slow in their response. The general feeling seems to be that India doesn't want escalation, but also do not want to be seen as being bullied by China.
The situation right now is being described as 'tense but calm'.
China changed all of the nation's maps to now include an added claim on a new piece of land in Ladakh. China also works very closely with their new proxy Govt (Oli's Nepal). So, at the same time Nepal is also changing their maps and laying claim on new land that they did not previously stake claim to.
So now technically India is occupying Chinese property, and they China been clear in wanting to use force to claim it.
We are still in a semi-lockdown and daily cases are still increasing. It's definitely a bad time to go for a war and the government knows that. More efforts are being put into decreasing the nation's reliance on Chinese imports. Previous tresspasses by the PLA were addressed through diplomacy and the results were good. Same approach is being tried now too.
That's fair. For decades we did not have enough will to retaliate against our adversaries. The result was there were terror attacks in almost every major Indian city. It's only in the last five years that the leadership has shown some resolve to irradiate terrorism. The perception of India being soft will take some time to wear off.
I think most people in tech are more introverted, but some of us are huge extroverts, and this has been incredibly trying. Clamping down on news coverage has helped a lot in my case, because it feels like I'm in some Black Mirror mass insanity episode!
> I rely entirely on external structure and physical separation of spaces to keep myself sane.
I think this will resonate with a significant subset of the HN crowd. I really thrive on externally-enforced structure (didn't take long to discover I made a terrible entrepreneur, but found a good niche as a startup employee). I've set my life up around having different events and places I need to be: classes at my gym, took up some in-person Spanish lessons, etc. When all those avenues shut down, I found it incredibly difficult to motivate myself to do anything. My physical health has deteriorated as I get much less exercise now, and that has sort of spiraled with my mental well-being. It's been rough.
> I really thrive on externally-enforced structure (didn't take long to discover I made a terrible entrepreneur, but found a good niche as a startup employee).
How did you find that out? Really interested whether I fall in the same group. I feel like I agree with you; I haven't been exercising as much because I can't go to a studio/gym to exercise, and the deterioration of both physical health and mental well-being is very apparent now.
When I tried my go at doing my own startup with a colleague, I found it incredibly stressful. But a lot of that stress was due to me finding it difficult to prioritize the right things to do, difficulty motivating myself to do the parts I didn't enjoy, and just overall procrastination.
To be honest, I know everyone wants to have a "growth mindset", i.e. the belief that if you're not good at something that you can diligently "face your fears" and overcome it, but at least for me I've come to the conclusion that I'm just constitutionally not cut out to be an entrepreneur. I don't know if it's my genes or my early upbringing or what, but I've tried all the motivation/self-direction/anti-procrastination tricks in the book, and it just doesn't work for me. There was definitely a sense of loss when I came to that conclusion, but I've found that I'm able to thrive when I have an environment with more structure.
Interesting. Can you share more about your startup adventures? How long do you usually stay and what kinds of teams do you prefer? I had my own stint working at a startup, but having too little skill/experience + the startup chaos made it way too stressful, but looking back it was pretty interesting.
I do agree on your last point. Part willpower, part understanding what works best for each of us. Accepting that we might not be everything that we want to be is hard, but growth is discovering the paths that we can otherwise take.
I identify with a lot of what you say. As someone who is (as you say) "pro-equality-altruistic" but not "anti-tribal-free-speech-absolutist", one thing I want to say is that I don't hate you. I don't even dislike you. I feel like the media and social media are making it feel like we all hate each other for tiny differences in our worldviews. I've come to believe that those spaces are dominated by the most entrenched, vocal, spiteful people. If you care about equality and altruism in your heart, I'm with you. And I bet a lot more people are with you than you think.
Anger gives us a spike of dopamine. The people involved in this industry are selling you that dopamine hit. They aren't required to believe anything they say. A large percentage of the people in media were educated at the finest universities on the planet. I think it's silly to believe they're so foolish they can't see that what they are spewing right now is exactly counter to what they were spewing 5 seconds ago.
A lot of people want similar outcomes but disagree on how to get there. When you recognize that you and the other person want the same outcome but disagree on HOW to get there it's more annoying than it is anger inducing. I'm not "anti-tribal-free-speech-absolutist", but I get why people want it. By seeing their point of view I can at least say, I see your heart and I get that this is because you want more goodness in the world. Just a long winded way of saying. I agree with this too much online is pushing conflict or blind agreement, and not as much shades of agreement or small disagreements.
Are you me? Seriously hit all the nails on the head for me. Except my country is not yet currently at war. And I used to go out social dancing and that is basically dead until next year most likely.
I ruined two coffees the other day. Put too much peppermint oil in and screwed it up.
And then I let my coffee friend screw with my grinder/machine settings and it got hosed. ugh.
I really recommend getting a workout buddy and making yourselves accountable. It's helping so far.
Hey, quick question about your coffee – why do you add peppermint oil? And how much do you add? I'm always looking to improve my coffee routine or try new things out. Currently I'm on an iced cold-brew trend because the place I'm in has been in a 40+°C heatwave for the last 5ish days.
I don't have it down yet. I just switched to vanilla to try out. Roomate used to work at BlueBottle. Told me that you really want to stay away from extracts, theyd infuse their own simple syrups with vanilla beans.
I think peppermint oil should work. Would be better if I used peppermint simple syrup I think tho. just more surface area.
Iced coffee might not matter if you're doing a lot of milk tho!
Have you tried making your own overnight cold brews yet?
Yeah, I've been making my own! I just have it black, though – no milk or sugar. It's just something nice to sip on in the morning without having to wait for it to cool. I might try adding vanilla or something to it to switch things up a bit.
Out of curiosity did you switch to decaf or just no coffee at all? I could never tell if it was coffee specifically or just caffeine in general which heightened my anxiety.
Social/political climates and the "cancel culture" always has something to target. If you look, at any given time, this is something that has been going on since we could communicate in a public sphere. There has always been and always will be a tension in the public conversation. I wouldn't say "cusp of actual war" though. There are many people however who are hoping and actively counting on you thinking that though.
I would argue, however, that all of this has been severely amplified due to social media and the current crisis of the news industries. We have to at least consider who is literally banking on your getting your attention - hijacking the fight-or-flight part of your brain is part of that equation.
The situation is unprecedented, yes, but war is not going to happen. Physical war, unless you are in crisis states which are fighting among themselves, is very rare. War among nuclear powered nations will also be difficult to ignite.
Despite the bravado of 'an eye for an eye' every politician cares about their future. Modi won't start a war with China and China won't with Modi.
China is already on a backfoot about the Corona situation and Modi is on a backfoot about a LOT of things but the media is bailing him out. I don't think war will be a right thing for both the nations.
60yrs ago, Nehru was still the Prime Minister. That war was done because of Nehru's disasterous forward policy where he single handedly asled Indian Army to capture Chinese posts because of bad advice from his generals/advisors.
China then waites until US & Russia were busy in Cuban Missile Crisis.
JFK was still alive 60yrs ago!!
JFK had such close a relations with India that Indian PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee had askes his brother "when will a Kennedy become a President once again".
JFK wanted to help India but he was busy in Cuban Missile Crisis. But after that, UK and US started dropping military supplies. And China ended the war single handedly and went back to the status quo.
Things that have changed:
1. We are a highly interconnected economy
2. China is at a backfoot
3. Modi is at a backfoot. (Note that Nehru was facing no such pressures 60yrs ago about corona, self inflicted short sightedness on Economy etc)
4. Nehru and the Congress at that time was not based on total and pointless bravado. The current regime in India is just busy in bravado. China has encroached since May probably and PM Modi spoke a few weeks ago and then, too, he denied any incursion and that lead to China hailing him
5. Neither India nor China will afford a war, leaders will gain from a skirmish. Chinese subservient media will hail it as a Chinese victory, same as Indian media which is super subservient will hail PM as someone who defeated China.
They won't be able to peddle lies if there is a war, for the war will be entirely up in Ladakh. And Russia and US will intervene because both Trump & Putin will need that tag at home of avoiding a war.
They are? That's geopolitical insanity for China. Talk about playing into the interests of your adversary. The USA is ready to eat pop-corn while our adversary (China) kills themselves over an obscure border region with India.
I would love to agree with you, except the present situation has been the one "media event" of my lifetime where having early warning through social media was materially useful: I stockpiled food before the two weeks or so of supply disruption and empty shelves at the start of the crisis.
I've found twitter to be both an extremely valuable lockdown coping mechanism with friends and replacement events, and an anxiety amplifier.
Materially I'm fine. I'm still getting paid and spending very little. All my travel plans for the year are cancelled and in unknown limbo and I don't know when I can dare to make plans again.
I think that free-speech is a central tenet of modern society and the source of future progress. I am strongly anti-tribal. I do not associate with groups, isms or movements. I like to purely talk issues and like to evaluate ideas for their individual merit and not based on who says them.
> pro-equality = altruistic
Pretty self explanatory. Generally socialist leanings borne from wanting to provide equality of opportunity and measurably fair treatment to all.
_______
I support most of BLM's policy goals. I believe there needs to be more awareness about racism. I think holding racists and people in power accountable is important. Police reform, removing qualified immunity, mandated cameras and reforming the criminal justice system.
However, I refuse to align myself to the movement itself. Because an agenda-less and leaderless movement can go in any direction any time. A great example is how the Gamer-gate movement took a strong turn away from 'ethical journalism in gaming' to 'racist hatred of women' within the span of six months. Religion is an excellent example of how tribes demand loyalty.
Many of the top thinkers within the BLM movement see violent protests as an inevitable part and many allies endorse violent revolution. I do not yet know if I agree on those matters. I do not want to sign up for buffet of opinions where I have to mandatorily eat every dish. I prefer to have my opinion a-la-carte.
Each of these issues are important but they have a ton of nuance. To find a good solution, we need free speech. We need people with contrary opinions to be able to challenge the protestors and through the friction there will emerge solution.
But, all groups (including ones of my peers) are increasingly moving towards hiveminds of agreement where the In-Group-Contrarian must be destroyed.
There is a reason it has me so rattled. I have yet to truly sort out my opinions on the whole matter at large.
I feel you. Try not to put too much pressure on yourself. I've been having a lot of ups and downs myself. Not having anyone to talk to I've been almost by myself for four months with occassional walks with a friend. But the sum total of my human face to face contact is about 4-5 hours a month. This is just not enough for most humans.
Plus there is the added stress that if you slip too much you could end up back into a bad job market. The only thing one can do is to find other healthy diversions and keep diet / sleep / exercise on track.
I hope my managers understand and won't judge my performance at this time.
I feel you. This has been such a shitty time just in general around the world, and I've been having a hard time personally as well. During the past month I've been pretty unproductive at work (partially out of my control), we had to put down our dog of 15 years, my grandpa had a stroke, and one my uncles has an extremely aggressive form of cancer. Luckily I'm still in good health, and I don't know anyone with covid-19.
My favorite blog was also shut down this morning by the cancel police (same blog as you). Reach out if you need someone to chat to!
Hey man, I identified with a lot of your post, but I've found some ways to cope with it and I'm actually doing pretty well these days. Feel free to PM me and we can talk.
Hey screye, mid-March to mid-June was shit for me, too. Nearly 2 months of not being able to exercise outdoors. Stress eating & drinking. I had multiple meltdowns, some of which bled into my work. I somehow managed to not get fired. In my own way, I'm right there with you. If you need someone to listen w/o judgement, and to tell you "yeah, that does indeed suck", feel free to reach out. I had some people to lean on and it really helped me.
Thanks for the offer mate. I really appreciate the general outpour of support within this community.
I am happy to say I have a really supportive group around me, so I do get to vent every once in a while. This week is a bit rough, but I should be able to find time to reach out on the weekend.
Being able to confide in a stranger like this is strangely comforting. If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.
Despite never having met you, one thing about Covid that is absolutely true, is that 'we are in this together'. There is a sense of camaraderie having faced a common challenge.
> On the bright side, I have no suicidal thoughts. None of my relationships have been destroyed (yet). I still have my job and I know the cause of my current state is temporary. I've started therapy, which should start helping any moment now. Covid has affected people in worse ways, so I'm quietly trudging along.
All the best! Thanks for sharing and keep on keeping on. We’re all there with you.
I hear you. I echo your experience to the letter. It got to me so I had 6 weeks of sick leave. On antidepressants for the second time in my life. Never felt so alone. Working from the office these days because I can't imagine sitting home alone again. Went on a weird tinder bender and knocked out 20 dataes over 7 weeks only to be social...
Possibly a cliche response here, but take heart: the fact that you're a recognized high performer, with a family and is able to afford therapy puts you well ahead of the vast majority of humanity. Hope you'll bounce back soon.
Strangely the coffee thing struck a chord with me. When I was having a bad time some weeks ago (worries around grandparents and covid) I got really frustrated because on top of that I spilled water on my keyboard.
Like, in the big picture, that's not important at all. But that send me over the edge into complete frustration. Was pretty unproductive afterwards.
I'm sure everything will turn out fine for you though, hang in there!
Is there any option to go to co-working spaces or the like? Some people I know have started doing that and while it's different than pre-covid (strict limits on the number of 'attendees') it's been really nice to see people together again and for them to find some relief from mostly staying at home. it can work wonders!
Years ago, I visited the zoo in Central Park in NYC and watched a polar bear, as it swam around and around in a pool. It swam in a triangle, touching the three same points on the wall of the enclosure as it made each circuit.
Last month I walked around Greenwich Park in London 125 times, each time following exactly the same route. I thought about that polar bear a lot as I walked.
The Infantorium was also a thing. People paid a quarter to gaze upon the wonder of premature babies displayed in incubators¹.
While an infantorium still feels awful as a general concept, it did provide genuine medical care to very vulnerable babies. Eventually saving the lives of thousands of premature babies. The linked wikipedia article probably allows you to consider the morality more than my first paragraph ;)
> Couney’s reputation suffered after the 1911 Coney Island Fire. Despite all of the infants being rescued, the incident highlighted the dangers of caring for infants in amusement parks.
Our dark history gives me hope. I don't mean to say I enjoy seeing darkness in our history. Instead I see it as a clear point on a compass pointing away from where I want society to head. Even if I don't agree with how everyone else wants to tack forward as long as we're heading West, I don't care if it's NW or SW.
When I see things like this I always wonder if any of my ancestors were involved. Did any of my ancestors go to see these zoos? What would they think of me if they knew of my disapproval? Would they think there is something wrong with me?
Can really related to this. I've been walking the same set of paths at the same places too. I've also started to recognize the "regulars" there too. A lot of us seem to be doing the same circuit at the same time.
The polar bear swims in circles because he doesn't know he's trapped. We walk in circles and social distance to protect our family and our communities.
Keep expecting it to get easier but being stuck with a toddler and two older kids with 1.5 jobs between me and my wife has been tough. It's exhausting, there's basically no downtime, and we end up in spirals of shame and guilt at being terrible parents, partners, employees. All of this to a constant backdrop of fear and uncertainty, trying to balance sanity with following the rules and the science, trying to mediate when family and friends have blowups about the science and ethics of lockdown, family members literally crying because someone posted mean Dominic Cummings memes, trying to hide all this from the kids but at the same time being honest and open with them about feelings, trying to ignore everyone's amazing and enriching family activities posted in photo albums on Facebook when our kids are sat in pyjamas on the Nintendo Switch at 2pm, trying not to think too much that if I was on my own and furloughed this might actually be bliss.
Keep finding it weird that 10 years ago I was trapped in San Francisco (after Twitter's Chirp conference) when the Icelandic volcano erupted. I remember the combination of excitement, despair and camaraderie that developed over the 2-3 weeks it affected me. But then it was over and it was a fun anecdote ever after. This, though, I dunno. Hopefully the kids remember we were here and we never stopped trying (even though a couple of times we probably did).
This resonates so much. In a very similar boat myself. A near four year old and near two year old, and a partner that is not as outdoorsy as myself makes for incredibly distracting days (toddler politics are crazy; those who know, know). As soon as I end my work day, I get both babies outside because they need that intensive activity more than I need to sit on the couch and be consumed by depression and anxiety.
Doesn't help that despite a 20% salary cut, my hours of operation have only increased as my employer furloughed a large chunk of our workforce. My ol lady works on the weekends, so even after working 50 semi-productive hours a week (7AM to 6PM most days, sometimes later) I don't get a break as she works twelves Friday through Sunday, often from early afternoon to early morning.
The mental toll has been substantial, which I'm sure has led to some lasting effects on those I share a roof with.
After talking with my mother about this, it seems this is a multigenerational thing -- people that lived through Civil Rights, Woman's Sufferage, JFK, Vietnam, Korea, The Cold War, etc are just as heavily impacted. No one is functioning well right now.
At the end of the day, all we can do is keep trying the best we can, and hopefully we don't release total a-holes to the world when all this is said and done. Hopefully we don't become total a-holes ourselves.
Once I limited my time on FB I felt better, it is really affecting your mental state. Unfortunately I have friends that I will forever lost contact with so I can't delete my profile. I deleted the app from my phone and logged out from everywhere except from 1 pc that I usually don't use. Now I am going on FB at most once a week for 10 mins. It has improved my life a lot.
Tip to surviving Facebook: If you must go through your feed, immediately start "hiding" toxic/hateful individuals that post nothing but bad content. If an individual only sometimes does so, start hiding their sources. E.g. If you see some friend that happens to post bad stuff from CNN or Breitbart and the content from that source upsets you but you want to see that friend's other content, then hide the page they're "sharing" from.
Most of the time, people don't post original links/content, so it's a "share" from an existing page that you can hide.
This was also my experience. It's easy to reflect on the day, or the week and feel like there was no joy, no break, no time where you got to do something you wanted or just relax. Our days were very long, as we did a staggered schedule with one of us starting work before 5a and the other ended around 7p so we were able to minimize unsupervised iPad time.
We finally decided to send our toddler back to daycare last week. She is an only child who loves playing with other kids and we felt the health risks were small compared to the social development and mental health impact.
I would say life now feels much more like a normal WFH situation. On reflection however, I realized my exhaustion prevented me from appreciating how much quality time I spent with my daughter, how much we were able to go outside and play every day, etc. Not looking to go back to that, but I would say just try to find time to take a deep breath, think about the good things that happened today, and give yourself a break on the compromises you had to make as a parent, spouse, or employee.
> trying to ignore everyone's amazing and enriching family activities posted in photo albums on Facebook when our kids are sat in pyjamas on the Nintendo Switch at 2pm
Keep in mind that people only post when they've made the effort to get the kids dressed and doing something enriching. My wife and I, without children, only post something when the dogs are doing something cute or we've made some impressive food or when we've finished a project.
We don't post anything about when we're showering at 4pm because we worked all day in pajamas or when we're searching amazon for an upholstery cleaner because our office chairs start smelling like body odor.
There's JUST as much fail going on in families that are posting all that "look how sparkly we are" stuff. There's the families of teenagers who have given up trying to stop them going out, even after explaining to the teenagers "your parents are 50 and if you get them sick they may die." ... But Mom's "anxiety sourdough" is definitely on point, so she's got that going for her, which is good!
But I agree with the other posters that you should probably turn off or at very least timebox social media consumption. And the "kids in PJs at 2pm playing on the Switch" is one type of coping mechanism (because kids have different stresses right now too with not having enough social interaction and some of your stress rolls downhill on top of it), so don't necessarily stop allowing them to have outlets, but maybe set a focus for a while on something like hygiene and get everyone to bathe by a certain time every day. Everything else... well, let it go, let it go, let it go...
Same boat (1.75 jobs and 3/6yo) so I'll share something that someone told me that gave me hope...
Depending on your kids age, they will remember this differently than you do. This is the period where their parents were present more. Sure there was shortness, and sure there is conflict but they'll remember the tickle-fights, the games you play, the time you check out of work and just be part of their world.
The other thing I think, is how grateful I am for my wife. I checkout sometimes. Shit, this weekend she told the kids to just give me a break for a little while and I needed it. But I checkout so I can come back and do the tickle fights without being resentful.
You might be surprised that some of your kids best memories may be from this time.
Posts like this have definitely made me wonder whether quarantine is harder on people living alone or people with families. Probably comes down to the specifics of the person and their relationships.
I live alone and generally enjoy my private life, but not having the option to see other people or share any amount of physical intimacy (even something as simple as a quick huge with a friend) has definitely been horrible on my mental health. People aren't meant to be alone this much (even for introverts) and there's a lot of evidence showing lack of physical touch can cause depression.
But how would I have handled the stress of spending all this time in a small place with multiple people, or taking care of kids? On the one hand, it sounds incredibly challenging and relationship testing, especially for an introvert. But on the other, I find myself jealous of those that can hug their kids or their SO multiple times a day, where I haven't even had a handshake since March 15th.
> It's exhausting, there's basically no downtime, and we end up in spirals of shame and guilt at being terrible parents, partners, employees. .... our kids are sat in pyjamas on the Nintendo Switch at 2pm ...
I've been reading "Selfish reasons to have more kids" (Brian Caplan) recently in semi-preparation for becoming a parent, and, well I'll just quote the book summary
> We've needlessly turned parenting into an unpleasant chore. Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have surprising implications for how we parent and how we spend time with our kids. The big lesson: Mold your kids less and enjoy your life more. Your kids will still turn out fine.
I feel a touch of shame considering the tenor of this thread, but amazing. I just said to my wife I don’t want to go back. And I have a pretty spacious private office.
We had our first child on Halloween and we both had only returned to work for a month before being forced to wfh. We both still are. It’s great watching my son every day grow. My wife’s job leaves her twiddling her thumbs a lot so she gets to spend a lot of time with our son. She does not understand the amount of focus necessary for my job as a SE. but we have never been happier and more sleep deprived.
I could imagine if we were out of work or had older children I’d be singing a different tune.
I feel a little guilty too enjoying quarantine. My partner and I are both homebodies, and so we've enjoyed the extra time we have together.
It's also been doing wonders for my stress since we recently relocated to another country (can't avoid packing and doing stuff to get set up for another country if you're stuck at home.)
I definitely don't miss the traffic from my old commute at all.
I can see how if you're single and unemployed how the quarantine would be terrible for your mental health.
I was single and unemployed during quarantine, it was awesome. But then I got a job which is much better than my previous job and now things are even more awesome. But I've never had issues with handling stress, for me life is great even during great challenges. Big part of thriving right now is to resist going with the constant stream of panic-porn on social and mainstream media.
Same here, I'm lucky to go through this as the most peaceful time in my life. I exercise and meditate a lot, and enjoy long afternoons in the garden, watching the small life going on and prospering, in the calm of now nearly empty roads.
Could have been the opposite if I was single, unemployed, without a garden and without a dog I think.
We also bought a house last year. We have said how lucky we are. How we would be so miserable if we were still in the small apartment. We also had worked from
Home one or two days a week prior. Having a designated work space definitely helped.
We have a 2 year old daughter and working from home is a bit noiser but so much nicer. It's not perfect, but neither was going to the office.
We are doing shift work in my lab so I go in every now and then at night.
I can say for myself (as someone who has struggled with this) I don't want you to feel shame.
Enjoy it. Everyone, EVERYONE gets good times in life and bad times. You don't need guilt while you're enjoying an up, and a infant is a great thing to enjoy.
Just pay it forward and inject that positive energy back into the world. I would hope everyone got a quarantine they enjoyed and not the other way around. I'd say that's my metric for where I want society to go.
EDIT: No not that everyone would be in a quarantine but that everyone would have ideal working conditions and happiness.
I'm also WFH with an infant. We have 2 very full jobs, but we have a nanny who comes to our house to help out.
It's hard to balance everything, but overall I'm really grateful I get to spend a lot of extra time with my baby during her first year of life. I know I'd be really sad to miss so much time with her if I was dropping her off at daycare every morning, but instead I get to take breaks during the day to spend time with her.
I'm with you. For us it has been pretty much fine. My spouse and I stay at home for the most part, except for the occasional shopping trip. Working from home. Luckily we haven't got on each others nerves much :)
Work: Incredibly smooth, even if I'm confined to a 13 inch laptop as opposed to 2x 26 inch screens (OK, I occasionally hook up my TV for extra help). Peace, quiet, fully able to focus on my tasks.
Physical health: Several years ago I decided to dedicate a portion of my spare time to sports and I got into my best shape ever by end of last year(body fat ~10%, down from 20+). Which initially got me worried given that gyms were closed and whatnot. So I ended up ordering some weights for exercising at home and I started doing it every day just to make sure I stay in that shape. End result is I've gained a lot of muscle without changing my weight. Body fat probably in the lower to mid 7%.
Mental health: Again - a lot of improvements: I'm not fond of real life interactions and I operate significantly better on my own. I do get mildly pissed off when my phone rings, more so than I used to. On the downside, I constantly run out of books which is becoming incredibly annoying.
Finances: Not dealing with eating out for lunch and dinner anymore. Though my bills have gone up now that I'm home all day long as opposed to just coming in the evening, crashing on the bed and leaving first thing when I open my eyes. I.E. my water bill has gone up 5 times, electricity about 3 times.
Summer: I had some plans, one fell through completely (still unsure if that's good or bad) and the other is almost at the same stage but it might be for the better(it's complicated).
So no kids, lol. The hardest part of this is how I think it works this way for everyone else on my team at work. They are (normal work + 100%). I'm (normal work - 80%). Got my first negative performance review ever a couple weeks ago. It's rough.
Feeling this. We have a 1.5 yo, not potty trained, the infinite loop of food in/out is a suck on productivity. He also doesn't understand why we can't play with him. Before Covid, we were pretty firmly against screens for him. Now he's a straight up couch potato, first thing in the morning he looks for the remote instead of wanting breakfast :( Yesterday, with much covid related hesitation, we put him back in day care. His original day care still is closed so we had to find a new one, luckily only 2 minutes from home.
The flip side is, I feel blessed to have spent a ton of quality time with him and realized how little time we spent with him in a pre-covid hustle and bustle world. I've been wanting to downsize our lifestyle for a while and now my wife is finally seeing why and possibly on board. I'd like to sell our real assets and move to the beach somewhere and basically retire early / maybe do low volume consulting. I don't know if I can totally sell her on leaving the US, but getting closer. I really love this place, but it's freaking toxic. I do a good job of ignoring new media, but lately it's been impossible. I know the upcoming election is going to be a last straw that makes me say F this place, but I have to convince the fam too.
I don't work remote very well. For above mentioned reasons, home = family/life, office = work, and I have partitioned my life this way for ever and it's very hard to make the change to WFH. Luckily, I'm a little older have saved enough and could likely retire now. But not by our normal QOL standards so best part of this thing is getting my wife to stop shopping and we aren't eating $100 meals on weekends. Hanging out at the park, swimming pool, etc. has been fun to have lowkey entertainment.
Yes, no kids. And personally I'm __way__ above my 100%. 3 weeks in we did our largest release by a considerable margin(double digit larger than the second largest). Which is mind boggling still, considering the project itself is composed of +6.2 million lines of code and we make releases once a month.
I am back at the office and damn I miss the quiet so much. It is so loud and distracting at the open office. This is the reason I truly want to work remotely. I honestly can do my work 2-3 times faster, and of better quality.
I spend 22 hours of my day in the same room, split between ten hours laying in my bed and twelve in my chair.
I had just moved to a new city before everything, started a new job. I don't know anyone, it's impossible to really meet new people.
My roommates all disappeared to larger living spaces in the middle of March. They're paying rent but I'm alone, and even when they were here I have nothing in common with them.
It's hard to find projects to do because I have no space to do them. I stopped watching tv because doing so in a deskchair sucks. I go through spurts of playing large amounts of video games. I spend most of my time either trying and failing to work, trying and succeeding to work, or aimlessly cycling between Hacker News, Reddit, rss feeds, youtube, and discord.
The only thing keeping me sane is taking 1 to 2 hour electric skateboard rides around my area and listening to podcasts but I'm starting to get bored of it.
There are a lot of underlying problems to my current life that I'm not addressing, and existed before all this started. The excuse of covid has only made justifications against self improvement easier. I'm stuck in a loop, I'm depressed, and I'm not sure what to do.
My company doesn't really have a good time line for going back. I'd love to work remote, it'd mean I can move to somewhere with more space. But until I get an OK from my company I'm stuck in the limbo of a place not really meant for remote work with no where to really go to.
> I had just moved to a new city before everything, started a new job. I don't know anyone, it's impossible to really meet new people.
Meeting new people seems impossible, but it doesn't have. It helps to connect with others over a common interest or hobby. Boardgames, hacking for fun, volunteering, writing, photography, art, music, radio making, astronomy, movies, sports, gardening, museums, libraries, animals, cooking,... There's plenty out there to bond over.
Instead of trying to meet new people, try to look into something which is a bit outside of your comfort zone, but has piqued your interest. Look into activities like workshops, classes, courses, initiations,... Every city has plenty of small non-profits with really interesting offerings who do outreach to local communities.
It's up to you to figure out what you want. So, I just gave you a few examples. Well, try this: sit yourself down with a piece of paper and take 10 minutes to jot down every activity which pops up in your mind and is doable. Okay, you do that exercise every day for the next 5 days, refining your list. Meanwhile, you start to do some research about the things you've jotted down. Find out if they are interesting. You don't have to work on that 24/24. But keep things in the back of your mind and scribble down what you think. After 5 days, you should already have an inkling of things that might be interesting to do while getting you out of the door.
As for meeting people: that happens as you start going to those social activities. Sure, it's a lot like your first day of school and you don't know anybody. But that's literally how everyone starts out. At the same time, you're an adult now, and the people you'll meet are adults as well. And the vast majority will understand that you're new around their parts.
Yes, the quarantine has shut down a lot of activities, but that doesn't mean you can't shoot an e-mail to whatever initiative you stumble across, finding out if they would welcome you shortly, right?
I hear you. I too moved to a new city shortly before lockdown, knowing almost no one here. I played a lot of games for a while and then got bored of it. I wrote a lot and then got bored of it. I did side projects and got bored of them. And a lot of other stuff. It's only been 3 months, but it feels like 3 years.
I'm almost all alone, only really physically meeting 1-2 other people. It's the highlight of my weeks and gives me energy for a day or two after that, only to succumb to the boredom again. I think it really shows how social interaction is an essential "nutrient" to our lives, without which we suffer and lose our energy. It's like an essential vitamin for a lot of us.
Strangely I've been productive at work. I didn't use to be good at WFH but that has changed out of necessity. I'm not sure if it'll remain this way after we start going back to our offices. And made some personal breakthroughs by taking the time to look deep inside. And then some more. And more. Doing any sort of working out seems to produce quick gains, I think mostly because I have zero physical stress otherwise. It's not a bad time for this kind of thing.
Walks are good, but I get bored of them too. With nowhere to go in particular, it feels pointless. But it also helps. At the end of the workday, I'm excited to go outside only to stop my excitement when I realize there's nothing really for me to do.
It's a loop for sure. And nothing seems to offset that innate need for human contact, not even all the facetiming in the world. This will surely be a big turning point in society at large. I see no other way.
It's interesting how many posts I can think back and identify with on here. This was me a while ago, but ya know without lock-down.
>The excuse of covid has only made justifications against self improvement easier.
Recognize that and address that problem in the tiniest way possible. For me, when I was at one of the lowest parts of my life, I started flossing every night. It was literally the only new habit I hated to do that I added to my life at the time. It cascaded to working out and a lot more self improvement. I ABHOR structure in my life, but I also very much need it. If you're anything like me, set something small up and keep that structure while you figure out new and awesome things you like to do.
Group activities also worked well for me but aren't for everyone. For me it was DND and Rugby. One I did online, and the other isn't really an option right now.
Good luck, and I hope things get better. I can't imagine COVID hitting when I was in similar place mentally.
> I ABHOR structure in my life, but I also very much need it.
This hits the nail on the head.
Someone on Reddit suggested like... basically doing as much cleaning as you can in five minutes. The lack of need to be perfect at it really helps hide the work, and I've been doing it every six or so hours awake. This isn't my first bout of depression and the slog to get out is real. The biggest difference this time around is I don't feel hopeless. I'm tired, I'm cramped in but I'm confident this will end.
I don't think it would have been a problem (and it wasn't a problem) until I started WFH.
There's a huge difference between a place you can live in while being out of the house for ten hours a day on weekdays and whenever on the weekend and a place you basically are stuck in.
I'm in an expensive city because the job I got is in the center of it. If I knew I could work from home forever I could move further out, or to another state. I think I'd have been much happier in this case.
I am moving into a place that does seem to have roommates more aligned to my own interests. A bit more space too. My current apartment was mostly as a result of not having much time/funds to move and needing to do it quickly and cheaply.
Pretty terrible. I have no prospects, my startups all failed, I've lost most of my money (lost about $2m that I saved over 10 years and earned from previous startups which I managed to cash out). I tried to go the VC route, but no investors wanted to talk to me, so I spent my own money instead and now I'm broke.
I need to find a job, but because I'm highly experienced and older (35 y/o), most companies see me as expensive and difficult, thus don't want to hire me. Plus, I'm unlikely to put up with BS. I suck at interviews/coding challenges so I can't get hired at something like Google/FB in spite of having a stellar resume and long list of popular GitHub projects I created myself with thousands of happy users. Experience is a double edged sword: I can get things done much faster than most people, and I've pretty much done it all in computers by now, but I'm also jaded and can see through all the BS.
I'm seriously considering suicide. I'll run out of money soon, I own nothing, have no family, can't afford rent, and am not eligible for any government assistance because of the stupidity of the laws. I've read a lot of philosophy over the years, and I've decided that suicide is really not a bad option.
I'm so tired of being a peasant and working hard while someone else gets rich. I don't want to be someone's little worker bee anymore. I think the good opportunities are gone, and I don't want to contribute to bad companies doing bad things (i.e., most of big tech, and big cos in general).
Hey, Reach out to some consultancies. I really like AIM consulting. I know it's tough right now, but the nice thing about consulting is they bring in experts they want to teach them and kick ass.
Opinionated, well spoken people tend to do really well in consultancies. Find companies that do cool things and be part of them. You can also gain experience while moving around and helping non-tech companies come up to speed. It can be PAINFUL but it can also be SUPER duper fun. When you find someone going the wrong direction, offer advice and they listen to and improve from your suggestions.
I've had 100% on-site. I've had one where they let me do remote 2 days a week. My current company (I went FTE) allows full time remote for Consultants. You just have to look harder to find these.
As a consultant, you aren't a stakeholder technically. You are a coder-for-hire. You aren't typically going to maintain the application so you're more of an advisor. This is awesome because as an advisor, you can make some great suggestions, but in the end you do it how they tell you to or you find another gig. What I've found is, if they don't listen to me or accept input for change I'm not interested. Those are typically painful but short consultancies. If they do take advice, then I frequently convert to see the project all the way through.
I've had situations where I can't wait for the contract to be over, and as you've guessed ones that are awesome and I convert over, or extend to stay on longer.
You can also get into consulting to the point that you're part of a team which is hired to build something for the company. These can be awesome because then you're a stakeholder and yet free of some of the internal politics of a company.
Anyway, I love consulting, but I also love the stability of FTE. I've found that consulting has been a great way for me to find FTE opportunities that I prefer over just interviewing.
EDIT: The most pain happens when the consultancy you're working with doesn't communicate well with the client, so you get put in the middle and have to server two bosses who are in opposition. The best cases you have one clear boss, but another clear tasking manager at the client. In these cases positive feedback flows to your manager and negative feedback should be minimal but direct.
Thanks for taking the time to answer. Sounds like it's been mostly a medium for finding desirable FTE positions for you. I think I just have the wrong idea of consulting. I've thought of it as guiding clients towards a specific tech stack and not so much writing code, but doesn't seem like that's a realistic view of it judging by what you've told me.
I mean that can totally be what consulting is. The nice thing about consulting is when you're doing your own business with it, it is what you want it to be. If listened to people who do this kind of consulting but you've got to be pretty setup to get to this point.
Please hang in there. I'm facing some difficult things as well, and can relate with being highly experienced and older.
Suicide is NEVER an option in my mind. Despite what I face, I could never think of doing such to the family I have left, and the people that I know it would have a major effect on, let alone the ones who I may not realize.
I'm trying to stay positive that good opportunities aren't gone, they may have shifted, and I need to shift with them. Looking at things from a perspective of scarcity makes this so much harder. I know that feeling. You are not a peasant.
Please stay positive. I'm struggling, but working hard to do so. I care. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you ever want to talk privately - email is in profile somewhat.
And if you're seriously considering suicide, please reach out to the Suicide Hotline, or other resources.... This really hurts to read, and it feels very similar... although I know we will somehow get through this...
That sounds rough, man. Your post resonates with me because I struggle to work for Big Tech too and I find that smaller customers get stuck on my hourly rate without considering the productivity gains.
Recently heard a quote about depression & anxiety that helped me:
- Depression is when you don't know where you're going.
I feel this, I'm facing homelessness and have no prospects, just high intelligence and aptitude and good leadership skills. I don't really want to kill myself that much but it might be nice to stick it to the sort of people who post about suicide hotlines whenever you're open about it.
It can only be satisfying if you are alive to experience that emotion, however.
I can't say that I have anything personally invested in your choice in this regard, but I will observe that suicide is a fairly permanent solution to what is most likely a temporary problem. And that eternity is an awful long time, so why go there any sooner than necessary.
Don't kill yourself. Thats a silly thing to do about money. You need to find professional help and bounce those feelings off of a another person, but recognize they are feelings but dangerous ones.
If I were in your boat - delete twitter, facebook, and stop watching the news. Stop spending cash, stop paying bills, save your cash for food and things you enjoy. Take a vacation. Cash is king. When business goes south - they stop paying bills. You gotta go into survival mode. Also apply for government help. If you are smart you can find a way to qualify.
Apply for jobs, I'm older than you and unemployed and many startups are talking with me. It's only a matter of time before you secure a better job.
It seems from what you have said, you are able to make large sums of money - so it will probably happen again since you are bright, you just need to make it through this year.
The good opportunities are not gone. Our country has more problems then ever you just need to find one.
I'm sorry you're suffering and I hope you don't commit suicide. You are not a peasant. Peasants don't have $2m at any point. Maintaining a middle-class lifestyle today, which is an opportunity still available to you, makes you one of the richest people to have ever lived, in terms of both material and opportunity. It sounds like you've hinged all your happiness and self-worth on professional and economic success, which is a losing strategy. Becoming as rich as the people you've worked for is a bad goal. You can learn to live more frugally, move to a cheaper area, work a job that's easy and boring but sustaining, declare bankruptcy if necessary, try to find communities of people you like, etc. You have options. If you've never lived in a rural area you should try it.
I created an account after reading this, and just want to tell you to hang in there.
These times will pass, things will get better, or different, or you'll just gain a different perspective on the same shitty things, or fall in love with some(thing|one) else...
Best of luck my friend!
What is your definition of rich? What do you really want?
It sounds to me like you already made it once. For most people, having $2m is enough to never really worry about money again. You could take double the median US salary from that sum, forever, without lifting a finger.
You did it once and you can do it again.
I can't really get behind the idea that companies don't value people with decent experience. Hell, you are 35, you are barely mid-career. Lots of companies are paying 50-60 year olds more than you would be paid because they have higher productivity than you.
You did it once, you can do it again. Don't give up.
Hey, I'm sorry to hear things are terrible. I'm not sure it helps, but I highly recommend reading up on self-compassion. It helped me realize that I was beating myself up all the time and not accepting that it's okay to have failures.
Everyone has failures. That's normal and totally human. It's important to recognize that it's okay for things not to go the way you wanted. It's a small step, but I think just recognizing that will help free up a load on your shoulders. Start there and try to focus less on what opportunities are "gone".
It sounds like it's going very rough for you. Have you considered/tried going down the consulting road? Given your experience, you sound like a tremendously good fit, and at the big consulting houses your age might actually be a benefit, as it speaks for your experience (so I've heard, so I might be horribly wrong). In any case, hope things turn out well for you.
Hey. I've been lurking HN for years, and just made an account to reply this.
There's a way. Reach out to anybody or me if you need it.
You were able to build a stellar resume.
You did GH projects with thousands of users.
You have experience.
Long time lurker around here, created an account to reply here.
I don't know. It's hard man. I know there are people in worse situations than me but it's hard anyway.
Working from home since March.
I spend all my day alone at home (with my cats). My GF arrives late and leaves early. She has to go to work everyday.
I feel unmotivated. I'm not socializing, I'm getting fat, I'm slacking on my work.
The worse part is that the effort that I and others have been making are worthless because a couple people can and will destroy it.
I'm living in Portugal and "we" thought everything was going back to normal. Of course not. The cases are ramping back up again. Today we have new and harder rules to follow once again.
I know that I won't be back into the office this year.
My summer festivals are cancelled.
I couldn't celebrate my birthday with my friend and family.
It was funny (a sad funny!) to read this post since the summer festival I'm going to miss the most was the one put on by the local Portuguese/Azoran community.
I got laid off unexpectedly, right at the beginning of the coronavirus. Severance package was terrible and I'm pretty much broke. Plus, the FMV of my options cratered, so the equity I worked hard for is already underwater.
Hit the interview trail hard and have received nothing but rejections. Despite getting referrals from current engineers, I don't even make it past the tech recruiter phone screen stage. And of course, no one is willing to offer feedback so I'm left with my worst thoughts of self-doubt and imposter syndrome.
Sitting here with no money, nothing to do, watching all my friends take advantage of the remote work by going to cool places. I'm going insane and all signs point to the continuation of this shitty status quo for the next year at least. I don't know what I'm going to do.
Sounds like you might need to take something other than tech to make do. Maybe even consider out of town jobs, WordPress, or even PHP. Or try remote jobs outside your country - normally the US has the best jobs, but it really turned around this year.
The interview gauntlet can be tough and demoralising, and extremely depressing. I've been there. After months of rejections, I ended up at a company where the last guy quit with minimal notice and they needed to replace him ASAP. It helped that I was out of a job and didn't have any notice period. They ended up offering me double what the average engineer got and they haven't fired me yet, so it might not be you, just the job market.
My best tip would be to find and stabilize your life somehow so that it's not a race against time at least with regards to living costs. Find some small victories in your life like exercise or a productive non-addictive hobby like updating wikis or drawing. When applying for jobs with failure for too long, your confidence and willpower drops significantly, and this might show in your interviews.
The fact that you are not hearing back may not be the negative indication. The companies you are applying for might just be in a "hold for now" mode, so even a positive initial interview may be stuck waiting for the next step. "Waiting for the manager to approve an on site; but wait, there is no one on site now; how do we proceed? well, let's think about this next week". One hand posting "help wanted", another starting "hard hiring freeze", etc. This can be infuriating, but is a much better state than a rejection.
Hang on, and do not dwell on the losses. Try to ignore news and perceived fortunes of others. Read books instead of CNN and/or twitter.
Most importantly, focus on staying healthy and sane. Healthy, energetic and $20k in debt is much a much better "COVID exit" state than spent, on antidepressants but with $20k in the bank. Contribute to an open source project, try something new. Are you handy? try building something or fixing something; not for money, just to keep your mind on building things. Good luck!!
Just hired someone. I focused on character—looking for hard worker, resilient, and utter honesty—and intelligence, assessed through a fairly difficult coding challenge requiring recursion to solve.
If you’re a software engineer, recommend reading Code Complete and SICP while you have free time. For working on your character, one path would be following the book of Proverbs :P
I was let go by my company 2 months ago. I stuck in a small country on the other side of the world. There’s no flights to my country (and there’s unlikely going to be any at least until winter). My temporary visa is expiring in 2 weeks, I don’t have any evidence that they are going to extend it. The day before I was let go I moved to another apartment with a 2 years lease contract. I don’t have any broadband connection here (long story short - because covvid). I can’t find a job. I’ve no idea what’s going to happen with me, my wife and our two cats in a month from now.
On the bright side, I have got a lot of free time. I’m learning lisp, doing excercises from SICP, jogging and cycling long distances. I don’t feel bad about what’s happened, I am re-evaluating my life now and I know that it’s going to work out one way or another.
It's inspiring to see that you are still taking time out for exercising and learning in such a situation, and are optimistic about the future. I hope things work out for you.
Thanks for asking and hope you are doing well! I unfortunately got dumped by a girl I was dating, lost my job and a (non-nuclear) family member while living in Manhattan, NYC. I thought I was holding up okay but once my gym shut down and social events shut down (before later transitioning to videoconference) my mental state and diet declined fast. The lack of human contact was mitigated to an extent by virtual social events but i feel exhausted by them after a short while. All but a couple people I know my age (mid 20s) are still in the city. Since my landlord offered no help and my lease is up, I’ll be contributing to my building’s overwhelming vacancies next week when I move back in with my folks out West.
Loneliness can be a serious problem. You really really do need some social contact. To keep things safe, I think the best approach is to have a small group of people who meet with each other but nobody outside the group. It won't hurt to also keep some distance to each other.
Any suggestions for doing so would be helpful to me (and hopefully the OP). If you have any specific ideas, please reply. When you don't have a small group of people to begin with, this is really difficult advice to follow
Ideally, get in touch with a few friends or neighbours. If you really don't know anyone in the vicinity, I'd suggest finding some like-minded people online and agree to meet in person. Or get to know your neighbours.
Sounds like a lot stuff to deal with at the same time. This would be hard for anyone. Hopefully the move back out West feels like a bit of a fresh start and you get back on your feet quickly! :)
You have my sympathy re: the breakup. Why is it "Since my landlord offered no help and my lease is up" instead of " my rent is due, but I can't afford it". You make it sound like the landlord is at fault.
In the UK we have a rent/mortgage holiday to protect us from these unprecedented times. I'd probably blame everything other than myself if I went from being a professional living in Manhattan to unemployed and unable to pay rent. Sometimes the carpet can just be pulled out from under us and it sucks.
Financial investments are inherently risky. It amazes me how people are such huge proponents of upside gains, but find unpalatable the idea of downside risk.
The housing market is terrible at the moment - if you were to kick the tenant out you'd probably still be waiting until this is over before you're guaranteed to get a new tenant anyway. Plus the usual estate agency overheads. I'm slightly too financially conservative/liberal to say landlords are in the wrong to kick tenants out during this crisis, but only slightly. Which is saying something! I'm glad that in the UK we have some government support to help both tenants and landlords.
My lease will end without the option for renewing because the apartment was rented out from under me sight-unseen. I'm fully paid up on rent. I was never given notice or the ability to renew said lease. This isn't just "It's the landlord's fault" in my opinion. I've seen plenty about evictions - but leases expiring are something I see under represented.
Okayish. I am a 'nerd' who loves 'staying indoors' and doesn't like to go in crowded areas.
Until I was forced to stay indoors for months.
I used to exercise regulary, gym/yoga/skipping/running before the lockdown.
But during the lockdown, it has all gone to hell. I eat, work and sleep. I used to watch a lot of tv shows but I cancelled all subscriptions.
But, on the other hand, I have begun writing stories. I had abandoned writing them for over a year now. In fact, I published my short story on Kindle last week. I am editing the 4 unpublished novels which I wrote and am trying to finish the 5th one right now. But it is difficult. Getting motivation is difficult.
At times, I feel anxious. And I totally understand the irony. It had never happened that I had 'gone out' in the last five years during a weekend. But now, I want to go out every other day.
Our government has started to ignore corona and they've begun opening up the country. The puppet TV news of the regime doesn't freak out people on Corona, which they did when the govt took corona seriously.
I miss cycling and going to the gym though. Yoga is a good alternative to the gym as it builds all possible muscles.
I was under the impression you were using skipping-locomotion as exercise, rather than running or skipping rope. I was wondering if that was a thing... skipping for exercise.
It’s okay. I live in New York City and am a very social person. Our company is all WFH but I was going into a coworking space each day. I went to tech and social events every night. I did a lot of happy hours. I saw friends every day, pretty much.
March / April I saw no one other than my girlfriend a couple times a week. Time became slow. I became a lot less motivated. I was cooking more than ever and saving more money than ever. I felt depression coming on. I live in a giant building and even leaving the apartment felt like a big production - can I trust the elevator? My doorman? People on the elevators? Why are they out too?!
By late April I realized I was going crazy without human interaction and no changes in my routine. Started organizing sidewalk happy hours with friends, where we distanced and drank and walked around the empty city. I think I’ll really cherish those memories for many years.
I used to travel a lot and missed that stimulation. Me and my girlfriend decided to drive NY - Los Angeles and stay on the west coast for the month of June. Stopped in national parks, saw some beaches, a lot of hiking, got a haircut in Manhattan Beach. Restaurants are open out west. Then ten of us rented a house in Lake Tahoe and had the most amazing time. Currently heading to San Diego to see family.
It’s turning around. My work motivation is back and work is now going better than ever. Working from new locations most days is fun. I feel great again. Interested to see how much NYC has changed when I go back July 1.
There's so much space: why be closed in a little metal box?
I've done long distance bike rides (couple months), they're vastly more enjoyable for me than being stuck in a car: the smells and sounds, people and animals around, the wind and the rain. A car is more comfortable, sterile, and boring.
And since you mentioned "perspective" - I find walking or cycling both provide much more perspective than a car: the distance covered is earned. A car is just a comfortable teleportation device.
These past three months have been amazingly good for me.
1. I was able to get out of the hellhole of my loud noisy open office that was a mix of developers, QA, project managers and customer facing pre-sales and post sales implementation managers.
2. We had a pay cut that caused me to run a Hail Mary and apply for a fully remote job at $BigTech in the cloud consulting division. I now don’t have to worry about an open office for a few years.
3. My relationship with my spouse has gotten even closer. We’ve found a balance between time together and our alone time. Luckily, we have enough space in our house to go to our own corners.
4. My wife was a part time fitness instructor before Covid and had a full time role in the local school system. During Covid, she turned her study into studio and she is now teaching classes online making pretty decent pocket money.
5. Because of Covid, I really didn’t want her back working in public again. Now with my new job we can easily afford for her to stop working and with her side business she will still keep herself busy.
6. Completely separate: we already converted another bedroom to a gym, our workouts didn’t miss a beat.
The hardest thing for us has been the loss of public spaces -- not being able to take my 3yo son the Air and Space Museum (his favorite place), to ride the metro, or even over to Grandma's house for the afternoon is tough.
What I miss the most is being able to sit down at a Korean restaurant with friends and just EAT for two hours.
Overall, though, things are going really well. The transition to working from home was easy (half the team was already remote), I've had more time to exercise, and our company has been advocating good work-life balance throughout this whole ordeal. I have the efforts of my champion wife to thank for keeping a 3yo distracted all day while I'm at work, and that is not lost on me, either -- I'm in a good place now because I am with good people, surrounded by love.
After struggling with it for about twenty years and dealing with a particularly bad episode, exacerbated by 2020 things, I was diagnosed with major clinical depression and started treatment today.
Socially distanced Internet fistbump to anyone else having a rough go of it. Some subset of the problems are within the purview of medical science; consider asking.
I thought I would love working at home but it turns out the office was my primary source for social interactions and now is not a great time to go out and make new friends for obvious reasons.
Before this, going to work was something I was always looked forward to and I really liked my job.
Now I just kind of roll out of bed, slump over to the computer desk in the corner of my bedroom and sit there all day, wondering why I feel so "meh". I realized I'm missing the in-office collaboration more than I thought but I also started looking at the work with a predominantly more negative outlook, thinking thoughts like, "Isn't this all kind of pointless anyway? We just churn code and go around in circles endlessly." I've also started drinking almost nightly to the point of excess. Also, the world is going to hell in a hand-basket and apparently most of my family and friends from my home-town turned out to be a lot more racists than I ever knew.
On the positive side:
- I still have a good paying job that has allowed me to work remote through out all of this and even gives me an extra $200 per month allowance for WFH costs.
- I bought a treadmill and finally started to excercise.
- When I feel a lack of motivation I often turn on some course or tutorial and I actually started learning a lot of new stuff as a result.
- I started saving a lot more money since I don't eat out and cancelled all my vacation plans.
Started a new software engineering job just before stay-at-home orders. Joined the team in March. Nobody is training me. My teammates don’t like meetings so I never see them in video calls. I haven’t been getting any work done. Manager is asking me why I haven’t been getting any work done. I don’t even know where to begin.
The documentation is garbage but that’s not so unusual. What’s unusual is that I have to ask questions in writing or schedule video calls with teammates if I want to learn anything that’s not in the documentation.
I know what onboarding is supposed to look like and this isn’t it. I’ve expressed these problems to my manager but I feel like I’m not being heard. Stress levels are through the roof.
Hey, it's me a couple months ago! With a side dose of "we may or may not fire you, we dunno yet" for several weeks (they did, abruptly, the day after once again saying they maybe wouldn't, and I guess I'll never know exactly why). Confusing as hell and unlike anything I'd experienced in my not-short career. I guess some managers/teams are straight-up incompetent at onboarding and blind to how hostile-to-new-hires their codebase(s) and docs are. Oh and useless, god-awful justify-your-existence-to-your-manager (then tune out because nothing anyone else says matters) standups every day adding to the stress. And no planning process to speak of. It's the second time in my life I've felt actually-mentally-ill and the other involved a sick newborn, so. That's impressive for them to have achieved, I guess.
Save money if you can and look for cheap/free credit lines, is my advice. If you can get a few months' worth of bills in the bank or available on super-cheap credit then the worst-case (shit, best-case, for me—I felt so much better after) scenario won't really be that bad. Hit up your network if you can and see if anyone needs some contract work, if things don't work out. It's pretty easy to scare up a few hours here and there, maybe enough to at least cover bills.
I have savings but I’d rather see the problems with my current job fixed rather than bailing out. I don’t think they’re intractable, just that the experience is a bit painful.
I've seen this a lot. People who've been on the team a while are happy at getting work done without interruptions. Many of the interruptions are actually important things like helping to onboard new team members.
I'm really bad at asking for help but if I had my time again I'd make sure your talks with managers are regular. If you are supposed to be working on a project make sure you ask which tests cover that area. You should ask to see the desktop of someone in your team how they work, how they navigate around the system and how they would add the functionality you're trying to do.
Great. Frankly this has been one of the high points of my life. No commuting has been great. I get to spend a ton more time with my wife and kids. Before the pandemic I rarely went out to eat and rarely went to stores, so really little of my life has changed. I've been spending a lot more time on projects around the house. Before the pandemic I had started working on redoing the three bathrooms in my house. I thought it would take a long time, but I'm getting it done much faster than expected. The pandemic came at an ideal time for me. My work is such that I can do it from home no problem. I'm not sure when or if I'll ever move back to working on campus. I've even received a 15% raise during the pandemic. I don't personally know anyone that has been sick, much less died. Our governor shut things down very quickly so we have had very very few cases in our state. All in all this has been a wonderful experience.
The lockdown improved the focus on myself, since there are less things to take care of.
Some work of mine ended up gathering attention from "VIP"s in my field. I've started a systematic study of new areas that I'll use for a future, major, project of mine.
Fitness is very important for me; I was able to do a reasonable, minimalist, workout at home with some equipment, therefore, although I lost some shape, I've been in an acceptable fitness state.
I suffered mostly at the beginning. It wasn't suffering in a strict sense, rather, I was unsettled. Small things, like having to mind what to touch and what not, or people's fear of the future, were definitely taxing at the beginning. Now, I don't mind anymore - I got used to, in the good, and in the bad.
"Fine print" follows.
1. I'm certainly a person who doesn't strictly need social contact, so I didn't suffer for the lack of it.
2. I also have a certain discipline. Discipline in itself is (I suppose) always hard work even for people perceived as disciplined, but I guess that for some, guidance from somebody is, at least, a soft requirement.
3. Job uncertainty is a given. I'm in a good position now, but nobody knows what will happen [to my position] in 6/12 months from now.
I'm a compsci undergrad with no social life.
My daily social exchanges were limited to my colleages at university and room mates, and for the past five months I've been sitting alone at my desk procrastinating, scrolling down reddit and HN numbed of my senses. I've since discovered that these people don't really care about me, as no one bothers to even send me the occasional message or call.
I've been dodging bullets at college, yet still receiving praises and oportunities from my professors and actually every real and functioning adult (unlike me) regarding my "skills" on programming and music. Opportunities which, interestingly enough, actually make me feel worthless because I always feel like a fraud and that I'm not good enough for anything.
I have no job, no income, no dreams or aspirations and being trapped here, unable to do anything to distract myself (talk to colleages, Grindr hookups), has me constantly thinking of how empty and devoid of personality and life I am.
My mother is every day more verbal about wanting me out of the house (despite me paying the bills using the government grant intended to pay for college), and in the midst of it all I've been trying to fix my relationship with my father to find he only wants me as a tool for legal benefits (due to my parents' divorce).
I keep myself fantasizing about suicide, but it's okay because at least I'm confident enough I'm not (that) stupid. Also, my "problems" are just part of a temporary state of mind and don't even compare to real problems many people are going through everywhere.
Thanks for asking, op. Writing all these things down actually clears up my mind a bit.
Sometimes writing this helps for me as well. I'm truly glad it cleared your mind a bit.
Please don't ever consider suicide seriously. It's not a way out - but a way to hurt many more than you will ever realize. I've already posted plenty in this thread, and don't want to repeat my own situation.
Please look into the suicide hotline, or feel free to reach out (you can likely find me in my profile) if only to talk.
This is difficult for us all, and I empathize with your situation.
Ultimately, worse than being isolated at home in a wheelchair.
For nearly half of the last 12 months, because of a severely broken foot, I learned life in a wheelchair. It was confirmed I would need a second surgery, and within a week I was fired. That was Sept. of last year. My doctors expected me to be fully walking in January - that unfortunately didn't turn out to be the case - it took a few more months.
Just as I was finally able to drive again, and seriously look at work again, this pandemic struck. All events and interviews canceled.
I decided to do health assessment and triage volunteering at our local homeless shelter for over 2 months, which was quite helpful for the time I could tolerate it.
Living alone in a metro area feels almost more suffocating than being in a less populated area. When everything shut down, I was actually happy to be able to volunteer and help those without a home to go to. When things opened up in my state, and some people's sentiment's changed about the seriousness of this virus, I've sort of sunk into a bit of a hole.
I'm continuing to be positive when I can, and it is a struggle. Plenty of financial woes exist, but I'm still here. Depression is an absolute for me lately, although I've been working to lift myself out in part trying to indirectly help others, and by focusing more on my own mental health.
So, I'm holding up, but not well. Being alone is one of the biggest factors (no pets, no family in area, few friends), but so is the situation we all find ourselves in constantly changing in terms of the right/wrong. I focus on data quite a bit and it's hard to reconcile.
We've been doing great. It's been awesome to spend more time with my children since I WFH most of the time, and I no longer have to spend time commuting. I'm lucky enough to have a yard where they can get outside and play without being around other people.
Since we are all home and not traveling we got in touch with the animal sanctuary again and have been fostering another round of kittens. These four bring our total to 18 since we started doing this. This is great because they are adorable, my children love caring for them.
It has also given me time to teach my children some basic microcontroller programming / electronics, which I think will benefit them immensely in the long run.
My wife and I have been walking a bit, ~5 miles a day. This does help me to stay in shape, although excess weight has never been a problem for either of us.
It's not all rosy, though. I miss my friends and family. Family is not as difficult as friends since my family is scattered around the country and we do not see each other on a regular basis.
Started off wonderful, went into nose dive, now picking up again.
It's hard living with someone during lockdown, especially when you're used to getting "alone time". You start feeling trapped. But that's something you can resolve with your own self, and talking about it with your SO helps a lot.
Additionally, I realized just how much work depresses me. What I enjoyed were the lunches and the laughs, not the daily meaningless grind and annoying people. And when you WFH it's so easy to just immerse yourself in stuff you actually care about and interests you, and forget all about that stupid 3rd party service you need to integrate into your system. But then, of course, you need to make up for lost time which creates a certain amount of pressure. And the urge to tell people to fuck off over video is so much greater than in person, maybe because they are too less polite and understanding because of w\e they are dealing with.
Personally doing great but also recognizing that many have had a difference experience with it. These things have helped me a ton:
(1) Limit time reading "news" and social media - it's not inherently bad, but there's enough of a gloom glut to depress anyone. Set a timer if you need to.
(2) Force yourself to have good daily routines (especially the big 3: eating, sleeping, and exercise - don't have to go extreme on any of them, just don't let them get too out of whack)
(3) Brighten someone's day, every day. A small act of service, a phone call, etc. - doesn't have to be big.
(4) Go outside, anywhere will do, though time in a forest or in the mountains is hyper therapeutic.
(5) Pray. Even if you don't consider yourself religious, you might be surprised what it does to you. If you can't bring yourself to pray per se, at least try to still your mind and meditate for a bit each day.
I very much agree with all of this. Number 1 and number 5 stand out to me the most because they are things I've had to work on the most. For number 5, I don't pray, but I've begun keeping a journal, and that lets me vent to myself and keep an archive of my thoughts, which has been incredible. Just turning thoughts into real words is extremely helpful for understand a situation and also a great way to blow off steam.
I love getting to spend extra time with my SO. And I love not having a commute. My quality of life has gone up immensely.
But I live in a tiny, 1 bedroom, city-center apartment. The desk I work at all day, is the desk that I also would come home to after work, and unwind/relax at.
There is no other space available in this apartment where I can put up an "office". It is simply too small. The best option I have is to sit at the "kitchen" table 4 feet away, but then i can't use my monitor.
The end result is I am having a horrific time at work.
On my best days, I think I can manage 80% of what I used to do workwise, at the office. On the worst days, its maybe 5%.
I think its compounded by the fact that I relatively recently became a manager.
There are many aspects of my job that I do not like anymore. I have been largely removed from real engineering. My PM was cut for budget/political reasons, so the amount of rote PM work that lands on my desk has gone up significantly, etc. But I was okay with this all regardless, because I derived satisfaction from managing my team well, and learning how to do so.
Now that we are entirely wfh, from a business perspective little has changed (besides the layoffs we just went through). I am capable of managing remotely. But personally, any positive feedback that came with management has evaporated. Where I could previously watch my team interact throughout the day, and see the impact I was making on company/team culture, or at least have a physical/visual reaffirmation that I have created a positive environment for my people (its a small company), I now have no positive social feedback, just lots of 1:1 video calls, which quite frankly, don't cut it on a personal level.
The combination of these two things has been awful and I am genuinely having an extremely hard time with it.
Transition to managing a team is difficult in normal times! I've been doing it for 10+ years and still suffer from the lack of direct feedback and a feeling of being unproductive. Be sure to remind yourself that your ability to impact is broader now and the results are longer term. Even when it doesn't feel like it, your team needs the leadership you are providing.
My company did a round of layoffs as quickly as possible last March. I managed to get my team through that, and am still trying to help the people I had to let go find new positions on the side. I've seen the impact I've had, legitimately keeping my people sane.
One of my devs actually caught the virus, and broke down to me in the hospital when he tried to explain why he might not be able to come back to work, ever.
I know I have had an impact.
But now that we're through the looking glass, and the adrenaline has worn off, and this is just the new day to day normal, its just frigging hard.
Nelson Mandela has inspired me in many ways. Going beyond subsisting in captivity, he emerged from 27 years imprisoned on Robben Island---South Africa's Alcatraz---to become President.
Today's episode shares part of what I believe helped him, which I believe can help us. First, he endured 27 years. We're only a few months in, and not in a small cement prison cell with a bucket for a toilet.
More, he practiced daily habits. We can too. I describe his in this episode, I hope in ways we can learn from.
Here are a couple quotes I read in the recording, both from his autobiography:
“I attempted to follow my old boxing routine of doing roadwork and muscle-building from Monday through Thursday and then resting for the next three days. On Monday through Thursday, I would do stationary running in my cell in the morning for up to forty-five minutes. I would also perform one hundred fingertip push-ups, two hundred sit-ups, fifty deep knee-bends, and various other calisthenics.”
“I awoke on the day of my release after only a few hours’ sleep at 4:30am. February 11 was a cloudless, end-of-summer Cape Town day. I did a shortened version of my usual exercise regimen, washed, and ate breakfast. … As so often happens in life, the momentousness of an occasion is lost in the welter of a thousand details.”
Beside that post, I've found acting in service of others gives more meaning, purpose, and inspiration beyond any self-care.
Whatever your situation, others can use your help. For me, my podcast costs almost nothing, but drives me to help on the environment. There is no shortage of people who could use help, in person or virtually.
Better than expected. And I feel really weird about it.
I live in Sweden and I started a new job half a year ago. In many ways it's much better than my previous one. The only real drawback was not being allowed to work from home. For the first few months, that didn't bother me since I had a lot of fun socializing with my colleagues. Then, the pandemic hit and we were encouraged to work from home. My wife and kids are also home, since my wife was on parental leave.
I don't get out as much as I'd want to, haven't been outside the small town I live in for months. I used to take the commuter train to the big city each morning. I do miss friends and colleagues, but I'm surrounded by my family every day, do precisely the work I want and win so much time by skipping the two hours of daily commute. My son misses his grandparents, at first he had trouble understanding the reason for our new routines, and he has said he misses grocery shopping. I get that. Personally, I'm really happy we've been able to order online from our local grocery store.
I do have friends who were infected. Friends of friends who have passed away. But all in all it feels like I'm living in this weird shielded bubble with zero social contact outside of my family. It's surreal and I feel almost guilty for having been so spared from any real consequences of this pandemic. I was talking to a friend and we concluded that we both feel that this change has been primarily positive to our daily lives, and that we're so lucky to work in tech.
We have had a lot of plans which were cancelled, unfortunately. My in-laws live in Belgium. Since April they were supposed to come visit us twice, we were supposed to visit them once and we had rented an apartment by the sea which we were to spend a week in together. So, lots of trips were cancelled and now we haven't seen each other in ages.
On track to getting expelled. Received the warning email three weeks ago. Was ice age permafrost stiff before, now approaching 0K stiff.
I'm a foreign student in Beijing. Living off campus. Xenophobic landlord kicked me out and I discovered there was nothing I could do to get rent or deposit back. Been bouncing between places, very painful as a person of colour in this otherwise normally incredible city.
Oddly, the isolation was initially great. Wasn't so productive in March, but having the pause was magic for every other aspect of my life. Got into incredible shape thanks to eating well, sleeping well, and a light but consistent calisthenics routine. But still missed by first deadline for thesis. Struggled to ask for help. Then asked and found it the university didn't care. Cue total collapse.
Everyday I wake up and try to make progress on a thesis but just end up frozen behind my computer. This has been soul destroying. Showing up each morning but failing to move forward. Anxious beyond imagination. Quit caffeine (coffee, green tea) for a month, then restarted in spectacular fashion.
Visa expires soon. Back to home country in a worse state than China and with ability to right itself. Feeling very doomed, lost, and annoyed to not have been able to capitalise on all this free time. About to throw an entire master's degree program down the drain because I can't stop panicking about it.
Just afraid of the future. Post lockdown, looking back and wishing I did more. It's hard to lose a grip on the world and to operate without a sense of meaning.
I don't know if it would help you to hear this from a stranger, but try to calm down and clear your mind through meditation. Before going to sleep, set clearly achievable goals for the next day. Wake up early, meditate, work out. Obtaining a lucid state of mind is the best thing you can do for yourself right now. If it helps, go somewhere you normally wouldn't go where you can be very in-the-moment for a time, to snap you out of your current environment and allow you to reset.
If you assume the outcome of your thesis is a foregone conclusion, this can enable you to work without hesitation. Many fighting chances have been born during last-minute, no-hope efforts, and if yours doesn't come along, treat that as a bridge to cross when you get there.
I know, easy to say when everything feels like it's doomed. I took a shot at building a MVP for a product to start a company with and failed because I spent over half the time messing around, working on what wasn't important.
Six months in, running out of time and money, I started these habits even though I thought to myself that it would be too late for them to matter. I became very productive especially towards the end as a result, and I could keep to my new routine since I figured "at least I'll be getting something out of the whole ordeal".
At the same time, I felt like the situation was beyond salvaging, and the product indeed never saw the light of day. The silver lining is that the habits I picked up when I set myself straight, both professionally and personally, have been immensely useful in the years that followed.
Give it your best. I hope things work out for you.
The WFH novelty has worn off and now it just sucks. Living in an apt that feels like a prison. I realize my only real friends I see are colleagues so now I see no one except for family. At the same time I really wish I had some time by myself away from the family. School holidays are making this worse as kids have nothing to do and I'm too busy working to help. Putting on weight, losing fitness. Can't visit extended family because they're all in other countries. Uncle diagnosed with terminal cancer, can't see him either. My employer is slowly failing. I wanted a new job this year but have put it off until the job market recovers.
The worst thing is it looks like it'll be like this for another year, ugh.
Hang in there, bud. It will get better, or the world will change enough to make our lives more tolerable somehow.
I joke that I barely noticed covid19: I was already socially-isolated enough (have been working from home for almost a decade, and in many ways I was/am already depressed for my own reasons) that the only change was my hair getting pretty long and my kids getting bored at home. I know I cannot complain - got a steady job just before the lockdown, my financial situation is not terrible, I have a garden to milk any ray of sunshine that Northern England might grant us...
BUT
I've given up on therapy, as there is no way for me to make any progress on my personal problems in these circumstances. I was supposed to spend a couple of weeks on a beach for the first time in years - it didn't happen and it might not happen for many more months. My parents can only see their grandkids every few months and now we're well overdue. I live in fear that my new employer will eventually feel the hurt and they'll have to cut, with LIFO putting a big target on my back. Even if I keep this job, my dreams of independence were shattered last year and there is no way to try again in these circumstances.
So it's shit really, but what can we do? Sometimes the planet just tries to kills us and all we can do is endure.
I went from being alone for 9 weeks to not being a lone at all for the last 6 weeks at my parents. Different but more tolerable downsides. I'm doing mostly fine and still grinding away on work but wake up finding that I'm more and more angry about everything being disrupted from covid at an age where I should be out kicking ass and taking names and angrier still that I think I'm doing the rational and community focused thing by staying inside minimizing trips to the store and then watching people shirk and go on like nothing is happening.
I know it's temporary but how things have gone during lockdown have changed my opinion on my country and a lot of the people in it and that's not temporary.
On some levels is has been good, my work is incredibly caring and supportive and I've found great connections with my boss and the team.
But in a personal level is has been terrible - my wife had covid for 2 weeks - which was rough but not life threatening. Then she got post viral syndrome and has been laid up for the last 90 days - even just going up the stairs wipes her out for a couple of hours. She is a fit and healthy 40yo who normally does yoga each day and exercises far more than I do. So having to watch her go through this has been terrible, at least we've had our kids to keep me going and busy, but it has been damn busy. As I said very lucky to have a flexible and welcoming employer who has given me all the space I need - but I'm still feeling in a personal level like I'm failing.
To top it off my son (who had no covid symptoms) has had an on and off bladder infection for weeks which they are now wondering is linked to covid and some possible kidney damage. The guilt as I was the last of us to leave the house before we locked down is huge.
Just so sad for my wife right now and no clear end in sight - some people on her long term covid group get better, other regress. It is similar to ME - so terrified it may be with her for life.
Well. Okay, I think. Thanks for asking. My partner and I were fortunate enough to switch to full remote work right as the pandemic started in NYC early March. We were even more fortunate to have a family's 2nd home upstate to flee to for some fresh air and space.
Work has been manageable. As some mentioned, definitely a lot more hectic dealing with varying WFH personalities across the organization. Not every day is a productive day but it doesn't feel too far off pre-pandemic productivity levels (including all the time lost in commutes/meetings/etc.
Personally, my partner and I have had some challenges:
-Cancelled and postponed our wedding to 2021
-Nearly lost a family member to COVID
-Lost 2 grandparents to non-COVID related illness
But ultimately, spirits are better than expected. Our biggest challenge now is deciding whether to re-sign our lease in NYC and start spending more meaningful time there this fall. To be honest, I can't see the COVID risk being all too much different there vs. other parts of the tri-state and major populated areas. I think it might come down to how much is open and what sort of quality of life that provides outside of our small, but not unmanageable, apartment.
I broke up with a girlfriend shortly before whole hell broke loose, so February to April lockdown has been the loneliest time in my life, but I powered through it by working a lot (two fulltime jobs + startup) and having few close friends that I hung out with. Also started doing yoga and meditation which immensely alleviated anxiety and loneliness.
All in all, I held up pretty well, but I don't think I would be able to power through another lockdown. I'm from Belgrade, Serbia and looking to fly somewhere warm and remote for the fall and winter (Thailand/Bali/Mexico) where I'd have more freedom than being locked down in an apartment.
An anxious wreck. Working from home, staying isolated because I'm taking care of someone with no immune system. The isolation is killing me. In the last few weeks I've stopped being able to fall asleep half the nights.
It's weird is an understatement. On the one hand, the remote work is great. I don't commute, so I see my 5 year old all day even though I'm working. I don't have to go into the city. My lunch breaks are in the backyard with the dog and my kid and my mom who watches my son. I've switched to 4 tens, which I love.
On the other hand, the news cycle is an ever present anxiety machine. Even when I don't tune into it, it filters in through texts and my wife. I worry that the medical supply lines are going to become unstable and that will be that, and there's only so long a type I diabetic will last without medical supply. It's odd that everyone else seems to be excited for some Mad Max style revolution, and I just want some kind of normality. I feel like the kid at the house party worrying about people scratching the table and breaking dishes while everyone else is having fun.
I'm holding up quite well. I'm still working from home, but my kids are going to school again, which helps a lot. Our holiday to Sweden was cancelled, so we're renting a campervan and touring around our own country (Netherland) instead. We're well aware we've got it relatively easy compared to many other people.
But if these times are so hard on you, why don't you share a bit more about your situation?
(I'm assuming this is still about the Corona crisis. Or is it about the unrest in the US instead?)
Living in Nothern Europe, and working in IT, life is good. Things are opening up, only large gatherings like festivals are still cancelled. None of that non-sense of being required to where a mask just to go shopping.
Summers is here, vacation time is just around the corner.
Some of us had is pretty easy, depending on your view. I worked from home for around four weeks. My wife has been going to work through the whole corona thing, closing pharmacies was never an option really. My daughter have been in daycare almost every day, allowing me to work. So everything has been pretty normal, just with less traffic.
As I will finish to move to The Netherlands in July (began moving in February but get stopped with the closing of the borders on the Belgium side), we had to cancel your trip to Nicaragua and we plan to tour a part of the country by bike instead during my partner holidays (I will probably still be jobless during that time).
The US thing scares me way more. Not in a surprised way, the worlds superpower has been in freefall for some time now, I hope it does what it has been good at throughout its history and reinvents itself into something better. If not, we're all in for a world of hurt.
The US scares me both in Corona terms (cases seem to be moving up whereas in most of the world they've been going down a lot), and in terms of what looks to me like extreme entitlement of the police forces, literally demanding the right to kill people, rejecting any attempt at accountability, and attacking peaceful protesters against police violence.
Several US police forces make it look like the only way forward is to completely abandon existing police forces and start over. I really hope the protesters win this, otherwise it seems to me you're basically accepting a police state.
The Police thing is just a symptom of deeper ills. But I think if these ills can be remedied, the rest of the patient has a greater chance of surviving.
Things went pretty well in Germany and since I already worked from home since 2014, my work wasn't affected. I started a lecturer gig at a local university, but they gave me total freedom to do it remote.
I was lucky in many ways.
I moved in a new flat end of January, where I could have a dedicated home office and home gym.
Because I'm not a very social person, I was okay with not going to events anymore.
I'm also polyamor, so I had 4 partners I could met in that time, which helped a lot.
I'm doing well. Ironically I think I'm doing better now than I would have been if the pandemic didn't happen; but still not in a particularly good position. Optimistic, though!
If you're struggling, it's probably because the systems that you put in place at the start of the pandemic have broken down. (Kinda like how we eventually forget/give up on New Years Resolutions...)
I'd recommend these[1] two[2] videos from CGP Grey to help. The first talks about the kind of things that you might be doing that are making you miserable, and the second about specific ways in which we can cope with the pandemic (and specifically a lockdown, if you are still in one).
Brief notes:
Avoid doing any of these things:
* Staying still, avoiding exercise
* Having an irregular sleep schedule
* Maximizing screen time; going to sleep looking at your phone, and using it as soon as you wake up
* Encouraging negative emotions, eg: by looking at the news
* Setting unmeasurable or unachievable goals. Waiting for motivation to strike.
* Obsessing over trying to be happy.
* Following your self-destructive impulses
Partition your house/space into the following spaces, and try to obey these rules about the spaces:
* A space for exercise. If you don't have equipment, you can do body weight exercises. If you have access to safe outdoor spaces, make sure to use that too. Make sure you set a minimum amount of time, and stick to it.
* A space for sleep. Do not use your phone here. Do not eat here. Do not linger here. It's just for sleep. If you're failing to sleep, leave and try again later. Setting an alarm to wake up is important to maintaining a consistent sleep schedule. It doesn't matter when you wake up - so long as the time is consistent.
* A recreation zone. Go here to do activities that you actually enjoy. Only do these activities if you intend to give them your full attention. Keep an eye on the quality of the recreation, and make sure you set a maximum time limit.
* A creation zone. Somewhere to work, study, or develop skills. Crafts, coding, cooking. Make sure this space is dedicated; so do not consume entertainment here, do not eat here.
If you have room for all those spaces in your house, you’re extremely luck. I work, sleep, and exercise in the same room. I’m not unusual in that respect.
If you have only one desk that you use for work and recreation, here is a little hack: switch chairs. I have a work chair and a "lazy" chair. Same desk, different feeling. Works for me.
Not too bad - my commute was 1h15m each way so I've got lots of extra time, I'm fortunate to have a dedicated office at home and a garden to relax in - I know I'm somewhat of an outlier though, and appreciate just how lucky I am.
I'm also moving jobs and it's going to be interesting ramping up remotely.
Before lockdown, I had already been looking for jobs. Since then, I've been rejected pre-interview by a handful of companies, and have bombed out of a handful of interviews at the final stage.
I was also made redundant a few weeks ago, so I'm nearing the point where I need to find myself a new job.
Despite that, it's been weirdly nice to sit at home, on my own, and simply learn again. Obviously, I'm freaking out about being out of work soon, but I'm hopeful that the stars will align and at least one company will offer me something.
Personally, I am doing OK. But worried about the folks that I know are not doing OK and have a sense of helplessness about the situation.
I have high hopes that the world is going to be better only from here. These hopes are backed up by seeing signs of empathy among so many online and offline communities.
I am not having a great time and I'm not entirely sure why. A broad list of factors:
I'm slowly passing the this-is-mostly-easy threshold in University. I expected that, but it's still somewhat sad. Before, I could put in the time and finish any homework on my own, now I get stuck on exercises or lecture notes fairly frequently. I've noticed that I easily obsess over the meta ("I should have read the notes vs watched the recording, that cost so much time") and I'm making some progress as far as not feeling guilty for not performing perfectly.
I'm also not sure what I actually want to do. I was cautiously eyeing academia because I like the idea of intellectual freedom (in CS, so not as concerned about the culture war) and enjoy teaching, but I haven't really found a field that fully interests me yet. Both theoretical CS and technical CS sound intriguing, but I haven't found a sweet spot that is a) easy enough to be tractable and b) significant enough to be rewarding. I think this is mostly hitting me right now because of a lowered sense of self-efficacy and mild burnout that makes any problem look uninteresting, but I still yearn for some long-term goal that excites me and I can't find one.
I had surgery last week and have been mostly tuning that out. I'm not in any pain, but do have to wear a compression vest that gives my breathing issues if I use my ADD medication. So I'm a bit more foggy and unfocused then usual, which to be fair is still much better than having to gasp for air all day.
Not good. What is really depressing is this is going to last a lot longer than I had hoped. Even more depressing is so many people just don't seem to care - all they have to do is wear masks and gloves and take some super simple precautions. People with great reach like Joe Rogan aren't helping either, not to mention dumb politicians and leaders.
For now I have a job, but nothing is certain. Also feel helpless seeing so many people suffering and not being able to help ...
It's been quite tough but also a blessing in disguise. I've managed to stop drinking (I was a regular "party goer" on the Weekends - I blame English culture) and feel a lot healthier for it. I wouldn't have managed cutting it out as my social circles built around the pub/clubs so being forced to stay home really helped curb that habit. I just need to work on the diet and exercise now but feeling 10x better than I was four months ago.
Well, seems like we're living in interesting times, but as a curse, doesn't seem so bad.
Having a relatively secure job makes a lot of difference I think. Mine has stayed consistent, with a few months of working at home, and now back in the office with a skeleton crew.
Thing is, I never swung for the fences. I've stayed in jobs that didn't pay as much as I might have left for, but they were secure, and allowed me to build up, so now in my early 50's I make at least 1/2 as much from investments each year as salary (total 200K+ a year living outside of a major metropolitan area). My spouse did the same, so together we're doing fine financially, and I think that security helps our piece of mind a lot. We've always been saving for the rainy day, and now that it's here, we're coasting a bit.
So we do what we did before anyway - head out to the woods, bike, hike, play board games, the random video game, and keep up our garden and yard. We're simple people with simple needs so we're easy to please. Probably the only thing we miss is travel - we used to head south to Mexico or South America every two years, and that's on hold, of course.
Oh, and zero, zero, zero social media and mainstream news. I mean none. I think that helps me a lot. I don't even enjoy NPR. If it's not something in depth and reasoned, I don't even bother. The world at large really holds very little for me, except places like here (HN) where there is technically interesting ideas to explore.
I feel for the folks that are struggling, though. I can completely see the "There but by the grace of God go I." I really like seeing people step up to help in this thread. You're my heroes for the day. Thank you.
Right now - really good. WFH has been amazing for myself and my staff's productivity and teamwork. Everyone is comfortable. Everyone feels more at ease to 'bring themselves to their work' and it's having a definite positive impact on our outcomes.
In about a week - terrible. As I have stated in other threads, my work has banned all remote work once we're forced back next week. Banned. Outright. So those of us with children and no childcare, or those with comorbidities are just screwed. The anxiety about that is building. Luckily, I have a neighbor that can watch my child until school is back in session. But I honestly don't know what I'm going to do in August. Our daycare has been and will remain limited in the number of kids it can take. The school is looking at a 2 day/week schedule to reduce the number of kids in the building. If that happens, I have a 7 year old with zero options for daytime care. I do not have enough PTO to take those days off, nor could I and keep my job, even if I had the time.
It was a serious low point for me when all of this started. No friends or family in this city, long distance relationship collapsed, and my only sources of interaction with people (our physical office and my gym across the street) closed down.
Since then I've done a few things to help pull back some sanity...
* I took up running. Every day I try to run a little farther and take a new path. Last Saturday I was able to do a 20k fasted AM run. It was the first time in my life I was able to run that far without stopping.
* I filled my duffel bag with jugs of water and used that for weight training instead. It doesn't really take the place the gym but it's better than nothing.
* I started taking flights to the bay area to visit my family in 2 week cycles.
I'm physically fine right now, but like some of the other people here I wish I had some friends / co-workers / general people to hang around and talk with. If you're in a similar situation, in your 30s, and live around Boston, feel free to drop me a line at this username at gmail. I would be more than happy to come out and chill.
Best time for me in a while. Have focused on productivity, organisation and both mental and physical health over everything because I have the time now I’m not doing things I thought I should be doing but didn’t need to do. Achieved more in the last three months than the last three years.
Insanely perhaps, I sold nearly everything I own on eBay as well. This was liberating too.
I just lost my drivers license due to a medical issue (my "controlled" epilepsy ain't so much any more). My partner left for a six-week trip recently. I'm working from home because my office still can't open up. Most of the stuff near me is still shut down. I'm effectively restricted to a relatively small radius around my house.
I'm trying to get out as much as I can, and go as far as I can. I'm taking the opportunity to get more cycling in-- which is my hobby anyway, but it feels odd in light of the fact that now it's my ONLY reasonable option for, say, getting to the grocery store.
I think if my partner were home, I'd be okay. I think if I had my license and could just go around and take a drive somewhere, I'd be okay. I think if work were back to normal and I could spend the days working with people in close proximity, I'd be okay.
But it's everything together that's just screwing me up. I feel isolated. I feel trapped. I'm losing weight because I'm not bothering to cook or eat beyond the occasional slice of toast or handful of trail mix. I'm not sleeping well, which is making my seizures worse, which is going to make the wait for my license reinstatement take that much longer. All the stuff reinforces all the other stuff, which makes it difficult to break out of it.
I don't know. I'm lucky that my seizure are not, comparatively speaking, all that bad. I'm lucky that I have a job, and that I can work from home-- plenty of my neighbors and friends are out of work. I'm SUPREMELY lucky to have the love of an incredible woman whom I love dearly, and who makes me want to be a better person. I'm lucky to be able-bodied enough to go cycling, and I'm definitely lucky to have the money to afford my groceries.
All in all, I don't have it bad at all. But everything just feels like shit right now.
Hey, that really sucks about the license issue! Tooling around in my car is one of the few things keeping me sane. Hopefully you live somewhere nice enough to bike consistently. My SO and I have been walking and cycling a ton.
I understand that feeling lucky but everything feels like shit. I hope you start to feel better!
Really strange. In some aspects it's been great, in others terrible.
On the plus side, not having to commute, cooking more at home and generally having more time (because a lot of things we used to do we can't any more) has been great. Also fortunately I am employed and my company is doing well.
On the other hand, monotony has really set in, where each day feels the same. Despite cooking more I'm less healthy now than before, because I sit in the same chair most of the day and have been exercising a lot less than before (used to play group sports). I really miss traveling and exploring new places. And lastly haven't really interacted socially with anyone besides my girlfriend since this thing started. I've also been spending a lot more time than I should on news and social media, I guess as a way to feel connected to the world.
All in all it's been an interesting ride but I want off now.
I'm happy to say that things are going better now.
Since I'm not in a relationship and I live alone, loneliness kicked in hard. Dating is also very impractical right now, so all I've done is just working 7 days a week.
Luckily in my country (Netherlands) the COVID counter-measures are now slowly being relaxed. Social live is slowly picking up again.
I have returned to my office a couple of weeks ago already. I have a private office in a shared building, so I can keep distance. This helped tremendously, I am happy to have people around me again. Since 2 weeks bars and restaurants are also allowed to open, I noticed that the ability to go out for a drink (although alone) tremendously helps my well-being.
Parts of my company have come back onsite, while other parts are still WFH. There really has been no rubric for bringing people back to work, but rather how political or aggressive different division heads have been.
But you know what? It could be a lot, lot worse. I still have a job - the hit to my productivity is manageable, and my wife also has her job too. Every day I see on Linkedin, people posting about how they have been laid off. These are people with 5-10 years of work experience post-MBA (often from prestigious schools) and I am still really grateful to not face any financial hurdles yet.
For me it's the fact that all our normal stress relief outlets are shut that is the big issue. The children can't go to scouts, my daughter can't do her ballet classes and my son can't see his friends. My wife leads a few choirs which were very social, but now she has to run rehearsals over Zoom which is a pain. I'd love to go fishing or camping, but I can't. I am a radio ham, but having just one hobby available to you can get a bit dull after a while.
The biggest issue for us is our work schedules. For a few months before it all went a bit weird I had been gradually setting up my own business. A mixed bag of IT consultancy jobs and app development. I was happy with it and I had to the time to put in to it when the kids were at school. The lockdown messed all that up as my wife is a speech therapist and now has to do teletherapy from home. Unfortunately that is something she has to do during the day - thus I have to look after the children during the day. That includes homeschooling, cooking cleaning etc.
My wife has to put in a full 9 to 5 shift. It's not just a few Zoom meetings, but also note and report writing. So after she finishes work, we have dinner, a bit of family time and then if I'm lucky I might have an hour or two to work on my own things - I'm not a great evening coder.
When it all kicked off I had some plans to learn and achieve new things that I thought the lockdown would give me time to do. Stuff like learn welding, do some redecorating and learning Unity. In reality this has been the busiest period I've had since having children. Plus I've put on a fair bit of weight so that is one more thing to deal with.
That being said, we still have a good income. My wife's work is secure, in fact she is earning more with the teletherapy model. But, her employer has given up the lease on their office as they can't see a return to face-to-face working for quite some time. I have a few passive income streams. We have good family whom we can keep in tough with via Zoom etc. Putting it all into perspective we are Okay compared to some others who must really be struggling.
Edit: Plus our children's sleep schedules have gone completely bonkers.
I've worked remotely for the past several years, so that part has unfortunately not been a benefit for me.
Not being able to go to coffee shops/coworking spaces for socialization, as well as not seeing friends in person has really started taking a toll in terms of depression. I am an introvert, however people often confuse that for not wanting any social interaction. I do prefer to have social interaction, just with close friends and usually in smaller groups (followed by rest after).
I do realize that I am lucky to still have a job and be healthy. Still, it has been a tough time.
Surprisingly well, especially since I was diagnosed with lymphoma a week before they made the stay at home order. I already work from home, so that was no change. One thing that has been an improvement is the freedom to do nothing without feeling bad about it. I used to feel like I was letting myself down if I stayed home for a month straight, but now it's like I have permission.
For unrelated reasons, I had decided in December I would be sober all of 2020. I have a feeling that things would be much worse if I were drinking during all of this.
I'm doing an internship this summer, so getting on-boarded and getting up to speed remotely has been...difficult, to say the least. I'm basically on-boarded now, with the one exception of edit access to Confluence (2 weeks of our managers escalating has done nothing thus far, apparently the other interns are in the same boat). I've found that the best way to decrease distraction, despite sitting right next to my desktop, is to use a KVM switch. For some reason, having to wait 2 seconds for it to switch to my desktop (instead of having a separate KB/M for each) makes it a lot easier to ignore it, even though my desktop and laptop are hooked up to separate monitors (decent KB/M/VGA KVMs are expensive enough, I'm not shelling out for an HDMI one).
Since I'm remote, I went home. Staying with my mom has been really enjoyable. I've gotten a lot closer with her, and gotten to enjoy her cooking again. If this had happened a year ago I probably would have hated it, but things are much better now. My vacation plans got cancelled, but I am happy to spend time here.
When my school sent everyone home after spring break, the first few weeks were rough (dealing with loneliness), but I have basically gotten used to it now. I have old high school friends I could visit, but since my mom is a doctor, it is best that I minimize exposure lest I get infected, pass it to her, and she transmit it to dozens of patients before finding out.
I think the lack of commuting has been a real benefit to my life. I've got back into reading regularly, back into the habit of cooking healthily almost every day (well, except for one or two takeaways a month if I'm feeling lazy), and I've smashed through a lot of stuff on my to-do list which had been lingering there for months or years. I've also had the time to start up a second weekly game group, so I'm now in 4 RPG sessions a fortnight (done over Discord and roll20). And finally I've been getting more sleep, I'm consistently getting >8 hours a night for the first time in years.
I like my own space a lot. Since moving away from home to start university, I've hated living with people. So having almost no in-person contact since late March hasn't bothered me at all.
Regarding work, I have a very stable job and absolutely no worries about being let go, so no concerns there. I've been less productive, but not to the extent that anyone has commented on it. So, no less productive than anyone else has been. It's been very nice getting away from the open office, though.
Recently I took a week off work. I couldn't go anywhere, of course, but just having a week to myself with no commitments at all, just being able to sleep in, read books, do some programming... it was great.
I wouldn't mind things remaining this way for the rest of the year.
I was okay-ish for the first couple of months, but now it all came crashing down.
About a month ago, I ended a serious relationship, and since gf moved out and I started quarantining alone, it became so much harder. I still stand by that decision, but it couldn't been worse time to become isolated. Got into one of the worst depressive episodes I've ever had. Lost my job, and then couldn't keep a sweet, high-paying remote gig that was supposed to be the next one. Fucked up responsibilities and ended things badly, fully guilty and feeling it. Sleeping 16 hours a day, spending waking hours completely aimlessly. My amazing friends and family try to pull me out of it, and I'm okay while I'm around them, but then I either go home tired and alone, or a quiet friendly get-together turns into a wild party with lots of booze and coke and hard depressive hangover for the next few days. My chronic health problems (blood flow to the brain) got much worse, and I even got myself to see the doctor and get some pills, but still can't change my life in a serious way to prevent it; it looks like I have a very high risk of having a stroke in the next month or two, but I just can't bring myself to care about it.
And the worst part of it is, I see myself climbing out of this hole, again, getting a good job, looking after my health, being a productive member of society, all that – and I see nothing to be inspired about. In my previous life, and in my possible future life, that looks just the same, there's just nothing worth of all that effort of living.
It's over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Arctic Circle. Vast amounts of methane are wait in the permafrost.
Despots and tyrants are gaining power. The world's most powerful nation has a billion people and no concern for ethics. Everyday people - myself included! - live in a system where fighting to improve these things means risking your kids' home, healthcare, and well being.
I'm a nervous wreck and when I look at my beautiful daughters, who are the most loving creatures I've ever met, my joy at their existence is filled with horror at the idea they will witness the end of civilization, perhaps the species.
Worst, perhaps, is that normally this kind of fear subsides after study. Most of the things we worry about are not, really, that big a deal, in a species-wide sense.
Climate breakdown is the one topic I know where the experts are more scared than regular people, not less.
I have been trying to find liberal democracies with arable land in cool climates with a credible national defence, and have found none.
Just find a western nation with nukes and try to move there...
Any hot war between a western nation and China goes nuclear, brings in all powers, and leads to the end of civilization. There is no scenario where combat beyond a border skirmish doesn't lead to total nuclear annihilation. Some large conventional war between NATO and China is fantasy and poorly reasoned fantasy at that.
That's good though, it means that a hot war with China is extremely unlikely and everyone on all sides will try to prevent it.
As far as fear of climate related stuff goes - it's pretty shitty but historically situations like climate change mostly just screw over the poorest in society. Medieval ice ages almost never impacted kings the way they did to peasants. Sounds like you have incentive to acquire as much power and wealth as possible before climate migrants plunge the world into deterioration...
Fairly well, all things considered. I've been using the forced isolation time to set (and try to achieve) several personal goals that I didn't have time for previously. I've been contributing to open source and writing more, which has had a surprisingly good impact for career prospects (after publishing an article that got a good amount of traction I had a 5x increase in recruiters reaching out, even though I'm not actively looking).
I also got accepted to speak at a (now virtual) industry conference which checked another goal I had set for the year.
Outside of work I've also reconnected with a number of friends from college who live in different places. Lately I've seen a lot more people reconnecting this way; I suppose the forced quarantine changes the dynamics of who is "easy to hang out with" since everyone is confined.
My wife and I have been taking evening walks a lot more, which has been good for our physical and mental health.
The only things that have been difficult are not being able to visit older family members, not being able to enjoy the typical NYC activities, or hang out in person with friends, and traveling. We used to travel 6-8 times a year and are really itching to get out of the apartment these days.
Ok. I was in forced quarantine for two weeks starting at the beginning of May at Fort Hood. I spent that two weeks with some wonderful people from an Alabama transportation unit. Then I was isolated for a month awaiting a flight to Kuwait.
I got here, to Kuwait, last week and was forced into quarantine again because some people on the flight had not gone through quarantine yet. It’s been a little lonely. After four or five days I was able to get a hold of an electric socket adapter so that I can recharge my phone and laptop. Life was a little rough without electricity for my personal devices while locked into this quarantine camp. In this forced quarantine area we cannot access any form of shopping and I really need some laundry detergent. This morning a cute little mouse tickled my foot and that spooked me a bit. After about 2 to 3 days here we started getting some cooked meals. I have gained a new appreciation for MREs.
Since I have separated from my corporate job and family I have gotten a lot of programming complete on a personal project. This morning I completed a major milestone on secure software routing for this decentralized file transfer project that executes with a fast GUI in the browser.
I'm sorry, I don't wanna complain. Neither me nor any of my loved ones have been made sick by the virus. Very few have lost their jobs, and I and they live in a country where the social safety net is strong. I shouldn't complain.
But since you asked. I'm not holding up. I was already pretty deep in a semi-regular depression valley, triggered by some bad decisions regarding relocation and leaving a line of work. In hindsight, I was stupid. Then covid took away the little social life I had in my new location. And made the future so damn uncertain. And showed me how brittle everything is, how even if you do everything just right, it can all come crumbling down at any time. I'm not even doing anything right. I've managed to build up a good skillset and a good degree and an OK CV, but only through sheer luck. I now have none of the drive that made me able to obtain those things. Nothing pushes me anymore. If I could get back on track, this whole covid and the crumbling of liberal democracy situation has shown that it can still all come crashing down at any point.
What's the point. If I could barely "make it" when I was younger, had a fire lit in me, a large social circle, etc., how am I going to have a chance when I get older every day, there's barely an ember in my soul, my poor decisions have physically distanced me from my close friends (and hell, we all know those things disintegrate with age anyway, it was all existing on loaned time, making younger and younger friends to compensate). I'm so close to giving up. Don't take it the wrong way. Life isn't pain yet, so I'll go on slogging, but I'm close to stopping struggling and just let it slide into a gray monotony. The longing for a fire and a desire is so painful that it's better to just forget about it. To just go with safe. Lock it down. Time to grow up, I guess. In my mid-30s. I don't like this, one bit. I really don't fit in in society. Which would be charming if I were a risk-taking adventurer who "lived life to its fullest". But no, I'm deeply risk-averse at heart. Luck and great people put me into niches where I blossomed. It's all charming when you're in your mid 20s and you're "promising".
And yes, I am going to therapy. I'm learning a lot, but it's not "helping".
Have been working on a startup idea as a solo developer for some time and everything was on track. MVP was almost complete and had a verbal agreement with an investor for a pre-seed investment which was going to allow me to fund a solid team (the team was ready to go as well). Then the pandemic hit. Investor bailed out, my personal savings got dried up as I've been funding myself for some time and bills started piling up.
Still pushed forward, got the MVP ready and collected some solid leads to reach out to. Yet, beyond this it's all pitch black as I got to find freelance gigs to pay the rent - which is not going well either - meanwhile pursuing clients, doing development, doing marketing, fixing bugs and a whole bunch of other things for my startup. It's a constant stream of fires that are waiting to be put out.
Have never been one to quit and don't think I will this time either but just giving up, giving up everything looks way too attractive.
Throwaway, because I don't really feel comfortable talking about these issues publicly. Thank you OP for asking, had been looking for an opportunity to vent. Hope we'll all pull through these terrible times.
I'm in a country where there hasn't been any lockdown but I've taken the opportunity to go into voluntarily isolation anyway. I don't like people so it has been a blessing to finally be able to just bail on all social activities with a good reason and help the society at the same time.
I could continue like this for the rest of my life so very happy about my personal situation. Still worried about the world though.
Honestly, quite poorly overall. It's a tad surprising given how much I usually enjoy working from home and what not, and how much time I now have for hobbies and what not... but I guess the repetition and lack of any real routine has actually got to me here.
I'd also say the following three factors hurt it too:
1. The feeling you're wasting your time. If you go by Hacker News/Reddit/Product Hunt/other sites, you'd think everyone and their dog has built some world changing product or service in this lockdown period, and that you're a complete failure for not having managed to do the same.
2. The lack of alternatives. Previously, working remotely was fun because there were other things you could do, and other entertainment you could enjoy if you were burnt out. In this lockdown, you basically can't go on holiday, visit any interesting places, buy things in most shops, eat in any restaurants, etc. There's nothing except 'do work' and 'work on your side projects'
That's left me in a situation where I feel like I'm just not able to do anything, and have little to no motivation to even try to do anything.
Very bimodal range of responses! People are either loving this or are having the worst experiences of their lives. Seems that the key driver of whether people are enjoying this or not is 1. whether they are still employed and 2. whether they have a life outside of work. The people whose only friends are co-workers and who wrap their entire identity up in their work are probably in a pretty bad place right now.
Personally, I'm in the "love" camp. I have gotten ~5 hours of my each day back due to not having to commute, which is 5 more hours for my family, my hobbies, outdoor activity, etc. It's great. I'm getting so many things done and fixed around the house. Making a lot of progress on wood working and metal working hobbies. Taking time to exercise and get outside more. My work schedule has remained pretty much the same but minus the commute it's like I have a second life to fill with things to do! I'm an extrovert, so I thought WFH would be a real bummer and drag, but the benefits are vastly outweighing the drawbacks of fewer human interactions.
I started off by discovering that social obligations were a huge stressor for me: I often wanted to do things by myself, but I nearly always felt guilty about it, dwelling on all the friendships I wasn't investing in, imagining myself becoming isolated and truly alone. Now I can schedule a couple of FaceTime calls a week, text a couple other people occasionally, and have my social obligations met. And I'm fortunate to live with my partner so we can give each other a baseline level of human contact. This has freed me to really dive in and embrace a couple of hobbies I had been robbing myself of.
On the other hand: I'm incredibly stressed about the state of the world and the future of our society. I feel powerless, I feel cognitive dissonance about how wrong so many things seem, I feel like things are falling apart around me. These feelings are probably exaggerated by generalized anxiety and secondary information sources, but it's hard to shake them off without being able to go out into the world and see some degree of normalcy- that some things, at least where I live, are a semblance of okay. It also wouldn't hurt to have the option of distracting myself with a movie, or some tacos and a margarita, every once in a while.
And then there's all the little stressors: sanitizing grocery deliveries one item at a time every week, not being able to properly go to the doctor for non-emergencies without risking exposure to a deadly disease. Even taking walks is a bit stressful, having to constantly navigate around other walkers in our neighborhood to make sure we're all keeping our distance. These things were terrifying for the first couple weeks, then they became normal, and now they've become grating. Part of me definitely just feels tired.
I can't stand WFH and it's been extended until end of September. WFH doesn't even save me any commute time since I live 10 min on foot of my office. But apart from that, everything's mostly peachy for me and my family (though one uncle had an heart surgery, it went fine) and close relationships. Though living in Western Europe might make some things easier compared to Americans.
I've always been a fairly private person. My kids see me every other week and we communicate via Telegram with random memes or silliness.
My personal projects are sort of stagnant but I'll occassionally try to tinker with Rust, hone my front end skills or just dump more hours into real work.
My guitars probably annoy my neighbors as I slowly start to increase the volume on my amp that much closer to 11.
I saw my brother after 2 months and a friend after 3. Dating just stopped in all forms (e.g. virtual).
I'm reading The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham and taking "stock" in my overall investment strategy and just trying to be more aware.
Been asking myself what I really want as a dude with over 23 years of IT exposure, living by himself. The life questions really have become more prominent during this time.
Lost my ex-brother in law who I really got along with. He died suddenly of cardiac arrest due to stress. He was 33 yrs old. 10 yrs old when he came to the US. It hurts a great deal thinking about that, but it forces me to ask some serious questions about what I'm doing with my life.
[Work]: I switched jobs in November 2019 and I've been busy with the transition from SDE to PM. I began working from home in February and I will continue to do so till next year. I had to turn one of the spare bedrooms into an office and discipline myself to stick to a 09:00 to 17:00 work schedule (So far failed 90% of the time. I work till 20:00 everyday).
[Health]: With commute out of the picture, I take long walks at 23:00 every night. Tokyo is a crowded city and the night time walks lets me avoid crowds/people. I escape into the woods and off the beaten path during weekends.
[Finance]: Financially secure for now since my new job is stable. I made the right call at the end of last year. The startup I worked at previously is going through a very rough time right now. The acquisition wasn't favourable, they downsized and pivoted into an entirely different product.
[Play]: Keeping myself busy with gardening and video games.
Overall quality of life hasn't changed. I'm not an extrovert so I'm quite comfortable with the stay home logic.
I was in the process of moving in Netherlands when the lockdown happened most of my day-to-day stuff were already there when the borders closed with me on the wrong side. I had to live with my mother during two months in my teenager clothes doing remote working and my job as a TA with a 13" Fedora laptop remotely connected to a Windows workstation and screen sharing through Teams. It was painfull and very hard.
I managed to cross the borders last month and now, I am finishing my contract in Belgium before going back to Netherlands and finding a job (and an appartment) there.
I managed to put more money on the side during that time but it was the only positive thing that happened the last three months. My focus was off, I was highly unproductive. I have already WFH in the last year and it was good because I was able to balance it with a active social life. Being stuck at home with the space as a working desk, a sleeping roam and the only part of the appartment where I could be alone was... well not a good time.
Depressed, but not because of the virus. I'm disillusioned with tech. I don't want to write software anymore. I don't even want to look at a screen anymore. I'm doing the bare minimum to make sure I don't get fired, but most days even doing that is a struggle. When I get a notification on my phone, I want to take a hammer and smash my phone into pieces.
The only things keeping me sane at the moment are camping (which I've been doing every chance I get), yard-work, or sitting in my backyard and watching bees gather nectar.
I'm the only one making a salary in my household which supports my wife and kids. We have health issues also, so must have health insurance. With the price of housing and groceries continuing to skyrocket - and one of my kids approaching college age soon - it only re-enforces the idea that I have to stay in this occupation for much longer. I want a simple work-to-live not live-to-work life on some acreage, but I'm trapped in this suburban life-style.
I'm definitely not doing well, but I suppose it could be worse. Between the pandemic and the company I liked working for selling half the staff to another company that I don't like working for (at the worst possible time to find a new job), it's been a tough few months. My performance is down the tube, which probably would have resulted in the new company firing me ages ago except that I'm one of the only people left who knows the product (everyone else quit when they cut our pay by 20% even though they don't seem to have been affected by the pandemic and are just using it as an excuse to reduce expenses).
I've been trying to stay sane by working in my garden, cooking more elaborate meals than I normally do, biking to the farmers market instead of driving to the grocery store (more expensive, but it makes for a pleasant day out whereas the grocery store is just a chore), and playing soccer on the weekends with my COVID bubble.
On March 15th, I landed in Sydney for what I thought was a quick, 14 day business trip. Little did I know that for the next three months I'll have to perform an already tough job from the confines of a room, barely meeting any human beings, away from my family. There were days I thought I was going to lose it. I managed to basically distract myself by working nonstop. Finally back in my home country.
On the plus side, the experience made me realize that the human brain, much like modern commercial aircraft, has a lot of excess/untapped capacity that can be called upon in an emergency. I wrote this based on my experience: https://medium.com/@h_liyan/finding-time-db449c8f8c10
Overall, I think in the very long run, COVID-19 was good for the world's soul, so to speak. I think we realized some things, both as individuals and as a species.
I have an unusually high tolerance for ambiguity and stress - yet I’m feeling the anxiety too. A lot of it is the delicate balance between “when will this end?”, “what’s the new normal?” and “what can I uniquely enjoy” all in the context of both the disease and social unrest and awakening. If I am feeling the anxiety, most people are.
I’m able to WFH and I’m in a spacious sunny place which helps a lot. Also, I’m not alone as I live with my partner.
However, provided that lots of startups are laying off people, there’s be a slight chance that I would be laid off too. That’s OK as I am a staunch believer that job security does not exist.
But It’s really hard to be calm with all that’s happening all over the world, and with some family members living abroad, in countries where the pandemic is hitting very hard. That’s the worst part.
Also, coping that your stack of choice is rather undervalued and rather "old", makes it appealing to learn new stacks/languages, but hard to land jobs using these new ones. Adding up the fact that there's no such thing as job security, and that maybe I would be fired given the situation, puts the stress up.
I'll keep up anyhow, because I enjoy my work, and I'm willing to get better.
Having the time of my life. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on (BLM, The Last of Us 2 being DOGSHIT, sensationalist news, etc.) but I've decided to avoid that stuff cause "why would I do that my brain" (Bill Burr)?
I just spend my days coding, reading, and playing muh games. Gotta admit, I'm loving 2020.
We elected to stay in Lanzarote for the duration of the lock downs, working remotely. It’s been great here, with good weather and very few cases, though the Spanish lockdown was very extreme compared to Ireland’s. Working remotely played out better than anticipated — an island far from home is no different to home when the whole company is working remotely. Bit of an eye opener there for sure!
We’re Leaving in four weeks to return to Dublin. Lost a lot of weight due to healthy eating and a lack of junk food and processed food. Cut out the alcohol almost entirely, and the stress levels dropped off a cliff after the first week of lockdown.
The whole experience has raised a lot of questions about where and how we live and work. The first thing I'll be doing when I get home is handing in my notice on my over priced apartment in Dublin.
It's ok in some senses and terrible in others.
Being in a relatively small apartment with a dog, and a fiance also working remotely is a huge pain. There's days where we're both super busy and we feel more like roommates than SOs.
I love my dog, but he's young and needs to get his energy out, and some days the monotony of taking him to the same park for exercise so he's content while we both work really gets to me.
Productivity is hard some days. I've been getting stuff done in general, but there's days where nothing happens. I don't worry for my job, but I feel a sense of guilt like I should be doing more - after all, I have no distractions, right?
I miss visiting my family - window visits are nigh-impossible when with grandparents who are hard of hearing.
I got screwed over by a re-org that went against previous (unwritten) company policy, and now I’m just angry every time I see the exec talk about how well they treat their employees.
I’m still not sure what to do about it. I had really liked the duties I had there, but it sounds like the role I enjoyed no longer exists.
My girlfriend and I of 3 1/2 years broke up last month. I do partially blame the virus for showing us that maybe we weren't as compatible as I thought. I'm not great right now but I'm channeling my energy into self improvement, being active again, work, and being more social.
I'm not where I'd like to be, but I also am hopeful I'm on the way.
I was buried in "I'm the victim" mindset for most of the past 4 months. Most opportunities were squandered because of fixed solution mindset (ie, I cant work out because the gym is closed). In taking ownership of the situation (instead of leaving it in Gavin Newsom's power hungry hands), I have been able to begin moving forward utilising what is available to me.
Whereas I previously was skipping workouts because I was fixed on how to do that, was medicating the pain/confusion of how to pivot with video games and junk food, was not taking ownership of the situation. Now I am taking ownership of what value can still be derived, ensuring I am doing the work required of where I want to be.
Pretty fantastically. Despite not having a separate office I've found working from home to be a blessing. I feel less stressed when in the comfort of my home, and I can work on my own schedule. This results in me working when I feel like working, rather than when I happen to be at the office (which I don't have a great deal of control over because I carpool). I can exercise all throughout the day, which leads to me being more awake while working. No longer do I have to stress over what others will think of my lunches, or what I should wear to work that day. The time saved by not commuting is massive. Not having to leave my social cats home alone every work day is nice too. I hope I always have the option to work from home from now on.
The virus came around as I was finishing my last semester of undergrad. I began with a surprising boost in productivity and an elevated enjoyment in my coursework, but as I began applying for jobs the situation became a little more real to me. The lack of a graduation ceremony, virtual or in-person, didn't help either.
My drive certainly isn't what it was a few months ago, but I'm thankful to have reasonable social and emotional health and to be working part-time while I look for something full-time, and I may be entering grad school for mech eng this fall if nothing comes through. I'd welcome any comments or suggestions from those of you who have been through grad school or job searching during recessions.
I'm lucky in that I work at an essential business, so I have been coming into work this whole time, which gives me social interaction. I have a 1/2 hour bike commute, so the commute part isn't an issue.
Downside: my girlfriend still lives with her parents (who have pre-existing risk factors), so we have only been able to go on walks for the past several months.
I have been avoiding my feelings by spending quite a bit of time after work in Hyrule (Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild).
EDIT: I should say that I am overall very fortunate. Still employed doing something that I like, safe and healthy, and my family is the same. My family doesn't live near me, so I miss them and am not sure when I will next be able to see them.
I lived in lower Manhattan on Sept 11. The following months were full of anxiety as no one knew if there would be more attacks (hijackings, bombings, perhaps a chemical attack on the subway like what had happened in Tokyo some years earlier). The city was full of missing person posters, who you knew were people who would never be seen again.
After 9/11, a lot of people avoided the subways or going to terrorist targets like Times Square, but life outside of the immediate area around the WTC continued, and even the World Series was played in the Bronx shortly after. 9/11 had a terrible impact, but things returned to almost normal much more quickly than they have with covid-19.
Its interesting to me that you bring up 9/11 since that was my first thought as well. I remember that time as a surreal haze of watching the news with a near constant "is this real and happening?" thoughts running through my head. I recall the feeling of waking up and how things felt normal again until the realization of the current state of the world washed over me. It took a long time until things felt "normal" again which is crazy considering the wars that were happening and the waste of life that the events led to.
I haven't really had that experience until the last few months. Its just as surreal now as it was then.
9/11 was definitely more localized to New York and maybe America. But the pandemic has been the first major crisis at a global scale for this generation.
What? Less than half a million deaths so far. Pretty serious, but definitely not the worst human catastrophe since WW2.
There are a few dozen wars, civil wars, and genocides over the last 70 years that resulted in more than half a million deaths. Plus of course much non-death related suffering. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran-Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Congo.
Plus some real stand-outs, like the Korean War (2M - 3M?), the Vietnam War (1M - 4M?), the Khmer Rouge mass killings (1.5M - 2.5M?), Nigerian Civil War (1M - 3M?), the Bangladesh genocide of '71 (500k - 3M?),
In the natural world, cyclone Bhola (and subsequent flooding) is blamed for over half a million deaths.
As it stands, COVID-19 isn't even in the top 20 yet (er, bottom 20?), though unfortunately it is on track to perhaps hit top-10.
For reference, WW2 is still two orders of magnitude worse than any of the above. Yikes.
There's also something that seems mentally different about a pandemic rather than a war. Diseases are horrific and it's one of the great tragedies that we weren't able to contain this one. But something about deaths from a natural cause like a virus just feels different from a death caused by the human hatred or greed of a war.
Not so great.
- No physical activities or exercises.
- Sometimes great efficiency at work, sometimes not so much.
- Too much stress in work, due to project timelines.
- Unable to pursue hobbies because I'm feeling low all the time.
At first I loved the isolation, lack of traffic, and lack of commute and having to be at work. I realized I have strong social anxiety and the part of my brain that has to work extra hard to get along with people finally got a well deserved break. I put about 10,000 miles on my car during the pandemic--I live in the Washington DC area and the lack of traffic was one of the best feelings ever, especially since I had just bought my first real sports car last year. I started doing Geohashing again (the game invented by Randall Monroe: https://geohashing.site/geohashing/Main_Page) Under the auspices of geohashing I hiked every mountain, lake, river, and dale I could find within a 2 hour radius of my house. At one point I used cruise control for 65 miles continuously on one of the most notoriously congested highways in the area (I-66). That may have been the highlight of the pandemic for me. I now have an intimate understanding of the terrain from Southeastern PA to western MD to all of Northern VA and even much of WVA and learned a lot of history in the process.
However there were some down sides. I have gained a TON of weight. The long drives and medium-to-long hikes didn't make up for the physical activity I was getting from going to the gym every day. I discovered many new delicious restaurants in the area in the name of "supporting local business."
Also, finally, in the last few weeks, my social batteries finally recharged, and I'm starting to get lonely again.
Also, traffic is back, so no more long rides.
Also, I caught Lyme disease due to all the deep woods hiking. It's resolving well and my knee feels slightly better each day (I did make the mistake of continuing to hike strenuously on it when it first swelled up and even now try to push it a little too far either with exercise or bike rides)
The good news is, gyms just opened back up.
Overall I would say my mental health is better than it was before the pandemic, and my physical health is worse.
In mid-March, after a messy parting from a startup, I left Manhattan for my parents' place in the suburbs, intending to stay for a few weeks; three months later, here I am.
I had blue periods where I got nothing done and just scrolled through reddit all day. Today I am enjoying running barefoot, the 16 hours of daylight, and the sheer luck of getting along well with my parents.
That last point is the big one, to me. I guess if I had any general advice, it would be to put energy into having good relationships with your parents, if you can. They won't be here forever.
I am doing really well. Normally I do not like remote work at all, but since my wife & kids are stuck at home with me, I'm enjoying it a lot. When the kids go back to school and my wife (presumably) goes back to her office, then I will probably go back to spending most days at the office myself.
I did start to gain a few pounds due to the convenient proximity of the fridge, but overall I am actually down a few pounds now. I can take a pause in the middle of the day and go for a walk, or even do more intense cardio, then go back to work for a few hours in the afternoon.
I'm doing well, thanks for asking. I have been full-time WFH for over half a decade so I had plenty of time to accommodate. My SO was forced to return to work recently, however, so I worry about that. And I think people have just given up on social distancing/facial coverings if grocery shopping is any indication. I also worry just how political people have made wearing facial coverings. I think it sets a precedent that we just don't have to listen to what science is telling us.
Pretty sure I'm doing fine personally. Other than going out less and seeing less people this doesn't feel too much different than what I was doing already, since I was working at home to begin with. Financially we are in worse shape, but we're still doing better than most people.
But I got a sudden and serious reminder yesterday that even if I'm doing fine, other people in my family aren't doing so well at coping. So I should be putting in more of an effort to help others through this.
Honestly, I feel like I'm living a blessed life - I have remote work for a good salary while many other people are unemployed, sick and dying, or fighting systemic racism. Personally, I am suffering from PTSD and depression, and still feel that I'm in a better place than many others. So I'm working through my own problems, wishing everyone else the best with theirs, helping where I can, and just accepting the difficult time the whole world is going through.
Fantastic. I've moved to a consistent sleep schedule for the first time in a decade, where my weekday and weekend wake times are only different by an hour or so (vs. 4 hours pre-covid). I've bought back a good chunk of my life from commute. The pace of life is slower and more leisurely now.
The major downside is I can't lift anymore having no access to a gym, and I know I've lost noticeable muscle mass as a result. I'm running now, but it's just not the same.
All things considered I'm in a good spot - stable job that has allowed WFH since the beginning.
But, the lack of looking forward to anything is really wearing on me. Work ends at 5? Nothing to do. Weekend rolls around? Nothing to do. Looking at my calendar? Nothing for the next year.
I fill the time with random projects, biking, reading, or video games; but it's really just become "filling the time", not getting any enjoyment out of them.
Watching Starship on NASASpaceFlight getting built bit by bit everyday actually really helps.
Joking aside, I've been working from home with my wife for years but not being able to plan or have any holidays has been the biggest problem for us. I know, I know, 1st world problems and all but still feels crap. From a different perspective though, this situation gave us more opportunities to find our more about ourselves and our partners.
Very, very poorly. I do not feel safe talking about it in this forum, as I am sure I will get yelled at by dozens of people for at least 4 different reasons.
Is New York tech just fundamentally broken or is the whole industry going that way? In my time in San Francisco, companies seemed to recognize happy employees were productive ones.
Since moving here a few years ago, and passing through several jobs, I'm beginning to think there aren't any worth working for. There's so much broken:
Been Never better. Saved on commute time, can work and see family, managing to be much more focused than noisy work env open space, Going jogging midday. Cooking my own meals (very simple mostly vegetables so really healthy! ). At evening, I do some bike and tennis class, then at night when all are back to sleep I'm back to work, finish the day watching a lecture, sleep, wake up, repeat!
I've been an intern in a new state since January, and I work here til August, then I finish my last year at school. It's been tough. I'm in a new state where I knew no one besides my coworkers, and I rent a room in a house with a few other people (a few have left, now it's just me and one other). Even prior to COVID, it was a bit lonely, but I'd go to a rock climbing gym a few times a week, go to coffee shows, and I had been on a hand full of dates. Then COVID hit.
I've never been one to get homesick, and I still don't think I am, but holy cow is it easy to get lonely when you don't see anyone besides other passer bys in the grocery store once a week. At the beginning, my only real interaction with people beside the occasional call with family were my morning stand ups. 10 minutes of human interaction with people I knew, and I needed it. Some days my boss's schedule would fill up and we wouldn't have stand up, and those days were awful. My motivation had plummeted, but I spent a bit more time with some friends from high school on Discord.
With all that said, that was at the beginning. Now, I'm going quite a bit better. I've gotten used to being able to be alone a lot longer, and as my state has opened up, I've been able to see some coworkers/friends outside of work, which has been a huge help. My motivation is still pretty lacking, and I'm much less productive from home than I am in the office. I can't wait to get back into the office so I can have a good environment again. I live in a 170sq ft room, and share a kitchen and bathroom with my roommate. 170sq ft that I sleep in, work in, eat in, entertain myself in, pursue free lance development in, make coffee in, etc. I do everything in this ratty beaten up room that has peeling paint in a drab white color. I'm someone who has always preached the value of separation of spaces, and here I am, confined in one space.
All in all, I really can't complain though. I'm very lucky that I haven't really felt depressed at all (sometimes a bit sad, but nothing serious), mt expenses are low and I can save a lot, I have a lot of great friends and family I can talk to regularly now that their classes are over, and I'm taking some classes this Summer to ease my last year at Uni, so that makes my time feel a bit more productive. I'm very fortunate to have what I do, and it looks like things are getting better right now. With that said, this year blows.
I'm fairly extroverted, so not being around people for so long has been rough, but my company is amazing and doing WFH until September to keep us safe. I'm a bit more distracted, but have been fairly productive. I need to eat better though and excercise more though. I think I'll be able to adapt in the near future though and get back to full productivity again.
I’m in love. With someone I can never really be with, whom had always shown me affection and was never shy about her feelings for me, but I think I always refused to accept I was in love until she started seeing someone new. I’m not jealous, more like heartbroken. It’s one less person in the world that will love me now, and those kinds of people are in short supply.
Not working, so I walk outside every morning and tell myself: "I'm on vacation." That helps. Nobody in my family is sick. I have a roof & 3 simple square meals a day. That REALLY helps.
Not being able to visit friends or go to the gym really sucks, but I'm getting by.
It could be better. But I know how good I've got it, and I'm grateful for that.
Wishing I was more into yoga and meditation at this time like I was 3-5 years ago, but last night I stepped barefoot onto the lawn and did some Tai-chi-ish moves. Dolphins are bringing gifts to shores to try and lure humans back. The natural world misses us. Our sterile environments are not the optimal. Get barefoot on the lawn, it really helps.
In February we started caring for a family member suffering from psychosis. This time has allowed me to take daily walks with them to help with recovery and keep track of mental health (every service is closed due to covid, so have to take it into my own hands).
This has made the transition to living with us much more tenable I believe.
I am doing great! I am planning the early stages of a company with a good colleague, lets see how it goes. I am already 29 pages down the novel I am writing, doing my daily training, eating healthy and having fun with my wife playing boardgames. In here the lockdown has been largely lifted off so we enjoy casual park stroll as well.
Remote work has put a spotlight on all of the issues at my company. I'm working more hours for less pay and all I can think about is how to get out. It's painful and I'm struggling to keep my sanity.
Pro: I'm more motivated than ever to work toward finding a new job.
Con: The job market is terrible for someone trying to change careers.
Mentally I'm doing much better. The business is suffering which directly impacts income and financial goals for this year but it could certainly be worse. One of my larger fears is that I will not be able to readjust to being in an office once asked to go back in. I have founds I do very well working from home.
It has been an incredibly tough time, but I've been forced to grow a lot. I think all in all myself and my family are in a better place. We're closer than we've ever been before, and we have a good idea of where we want to go in life. A real plan, not just "surviving from day to day".
Some stressors here and there, but I'm doing better than most. I'm glad I'm out of college now so I'm not strictly beholden to the whims of a college admin. Allows me to make my choices for myself instead of the existential threat of not graduating. Its given me more time to read.
One of the best things I did right before lockdown was to buy an Olympic Bar and learn how to slow-cook cheap cuts of meat. Despite being mostly sedentary (and broke), I'm in the best shape of my life simply from eating once or twice a day and doing ~10x 50kg squats every 2nd or 3rd day.
The state of the world isn't great, but I have never been more productive and more relaxed and fit at the same time. Time to read, write, build businesses, develop software and do a lot of exercise. Even though mandatory quarantine here ended, we are making it more permanent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snAhsXyO3Ck
i found the above inked CGP Grey video to be helpful i watch it once a week to keep things in perspective.
hope this helps others too
Have an uncle in prison. Part of me hopes this time helps people empathize with those essentially in solitary confinement and how it is the opposite of helpful in terms of recalibrating behavior toward what society wants/needs. We should ban solitary confinement at least...
I feel very fortunate and luck. I do well in a WFH situation as do most of my coworkers, and nobody I know has taken sick. I've taken to cooking, learned tons of new recipes and virtually eliminated a lingering health condition because I finally have time to exercise.
In terms of work, career, the team etc. things are going very well. Have really enjoyed working from home and the balanced life style it has brought with it, am eating well, exercising regularly, etc. and so hope to remain mainly WFH going forward.
The last few weeks have been pretty tough though. I understand myself to be prone to becoming over-stimulated from following the news too closely and so generally heavily moderate my intake of it. The last few weeks really de-railed that though, a severe escalation in craziness in what has already been a crazy year, and I've found myself glued to keeping up with what's going on and what's being said by both sides of the current argument.
The hit to my personal, non-work productivity has been one area affected but I'm not too concerned as I can play catch-up on some of that. The larger hit the past few weeks has taken is that it has essentially confirmed my concerns that America is not, and will not ever be, home for me.
Watching Marxism grip America by the throat, after seeing the damage it has wrought in the past, and the sheer level of support for it now, has been incredibly demoralizing. Consequentially I'm now placed in the position whereby I've to start looking at packing up and moving my family's entire life yet again which is... not great.
Fine overall, but weight coming back on as not playing football (soccer) 3 times a week like I was! Dreading going back to it, as every time I don't play for months and health/fitness suffer it takes a good 6 weeks to get back to where I was.
I'm doing wonderful. There's no way I'm ever going back to the office. My work feels more consistent and enjoyable. I'm exercising and being active more than I ever have in my life.
Working from home is great, but I already did that. It kinda sucks to be somewhat locked at home, but I just focus on my job and wait for this to pass.
on one side, not much has changed on my work situation since I've been working from home since 2018 as a freelancer.
but yeah, some projects that has been agreed on with future client previously is either canceled or pending until further notice. and that has forced me to tighten my family expenses while I'm struggling to find another job or projects.
Astoundingly poorly. I'm (as far as I can tell) older than the median HN poster, which means I've had more time to make good decisions or poor ones and have the cumulative weight of them bear down on my life.
Career-wise as I've posted previously my job is in peril. Finding another role that pays as well at 50+ can be a challenge in IT, I believe the current economic strife will amplify the difficulty.
I just have to say thanks for asking. I don't know if folks outside of a given field understand the particular insanity one in that field suffers.
TL;DR: on paper I have a perfect job/damn good life but I legit cannot force myself to do any work.
Let's look at the brass tacks for me and why I should be so happy:
1. 5+ years salary in the bank. 2. Several rental properties, all operating normally, covering all of our monthly expenses. 3. A high-paying remote job with infinite autonomy. 4. 10-month old baby, our first. My mom provides free childcare.
This person has it all, right? Oh my god no I have never been this miserable. Our partners are insurance companies, and they are always slow to work with. With COVID they are effectively non-operational when it comes to implementing new software. This means we just spin our wheels.
Life have never been so meaningless from 9-5. There are days when I don't even open my editor or attend meetings. There is just this incredible detachment amongst the whole team.
When I clock out, life is perfect. I never liked going out or anything anyways, so it's just the perfect excuse to sit and home and work on my creative projects.
I am currently working on a plan to take a leave of absence because the alternative is that I just resign. Sitting so close to the life I've always wanted (being a couch potato) and having my beautiful son to be with all day has made it impossible to contribute to my team and the guilt of that is gutting me.
When the decision was made to work-from-home, I just used my work laptop. A few days later I drove to the office and grabbed my monitors, keyboard, mouse, and various other odds-and-ends. I now have the same setup at home as I did at work. I already had a home-office set up, so all I really had to do was shuffle things around to make room for all of my work stuff.
I did have to buy some stuff to make the home office more usable though. I've added a keyboard tray, cheap portable air conditioner (my home office is west-facing, so afternoons can get quite toasty), and a cat hammock for the window. Of all of those, the cat hammock was the biggest boost to my productivity since it keeps the cat off my lap/keyboard.
I went from an open plan office with 250 people (across probably a dozen departments) to my own private office with a window that opens. My commute went from about 2 hours per day on public transit to about 1 minute per day. I haven't had to buy lunch (or been tempted by vending machines) in over three months. I can open a window and smell freshly cut grass and hear birds chirping.
Socially, I'm actually keeping in touch with friends slightly better than I was pre-lockdown. On the other hand, I'm not seeing friends in person as much as I used to and I'm not walking nearly as much as I used to - these things are slowly taking a toll. My volunteer gig also completely shut down, I really miss that.
I'm not looking forward to going back to the office. I'm not looking forward to wasting 10 hours per week sitting on a bus. Actually, the chances of me being willing to take the bus when there isn't a vaccine available are pretty slim, so that will turn into about 8 hours per week of driving, not to mention the added costs of gas, maintenance, insurance, and possibly parking - none of which I'm looking forward to. My current car is a pig on gas, which is fine since I'm not using it for commuting, so I may need to replace it to make driving to work even a little bit reasonable.
In regards to the quarantine: I actually don't mind at all. But I understand that by already having been working from home, as well as being rather introverted, I am less affected than most.
In regards to everything else: Heartbroken. Liberalism is being replaced with racial collectivization, something with which you cannot build a stable or just society.
I was working remotely before Covid hit, so little has changed with my work--the biggest change is that I have more work. Some of my friends have lost family members to Covid, but no one in my family or friends has died yet.
I've had to make some big adjustments to my life plan due to Covid, though. In February I was planning to move into a van, because I wanted to own my own living space, but didn't want to commit to any of the locations I found where I could afford to buy property. Part of this plan was to shower in rock climbing gyms, but all these closed down, and even though some in the South are reopening now, I don't think the pandemic risks are worth it. In late May I finally bought the van and I'm showering at a friend's place until I can build a shower in the van. Frankly, I'm terrified of this whole process--it's hard to sleep at night sometimes because I tend to ruminate on all the ways things could go wrong. But I'm doing it, and so far I've made it through all the challenges.
Three years and nine months ago, I stopped drinking and started consciously trying to build real coping mechanisms, and today I'm seeing my efforts from those years pay off a lot. Here are some things that have been helping me:
1. Exercise: I'm fortunate enough to live in an area where I can rock climb, which I love. But almost anyone can run, and cardio arguably works better than anything for improving ones health and mood. Years ago I used a plan similar to this one[1] to run a marathon, and it was not as hard as I thought it would be. I would encourage anyone who is having trouble staying fit right now to pick up this plan and start. You don't need an official marathon event to run a marathon--there are plenty of 26.2-mile loops in the world. Do it for yourself not for the medal.
2. Gratitude: one thing I've been trying to do is spend some time each day thinking of what I'm grateful for. This has helped immensely: as a problem-solver my tendency is to focus on problems in my life because things that are going well don't require any action, but the end result of that is that I only ever see the problems in life. If nothing else, I can hear, I can see, I can walk--these are all incredible things and they are not guaranteed--many people can't do these things. And indeed I'm much more fortunate than just these basics.
3. Let love guide my actions, not fear. It's easy to let fear run away with my thoughts, but when I'm doing well, I can act out of love. Earlier in my life I thought I needed fear to keep me safe, but I've learned in the past few years that all the things I did out of fear to keep myself safe, I can do out of love for myself and others. Sometimes that means doing the same things--wearing a mask, washing my hands, being politically active--but doing these things out of love for myself and others feels different than doing them out of fear. I'm far from perfect here (as anyone can see in my post history) but I've made a lot of progress.
4. Meditation: setting aside time to actually think about 2 and 3 and refocus is key.
5. Diet: eating well has been really hard for me, but recently I've been focusing on eating healthy, low-calorie things (vegetables, fruits, lean meats) rather than focusing on not eating unhealthy things. It's a subtle difference but it seems to be helping.
6. Going easy on myself: I have trouble with consistency and motivation on all these things, and can judge myself really harshly when I go days without meditating or exercising or eating well.
7. Understanding my own limitations: I have a lot of strong feelings about systemic police racism, brutality and murder, the mass death being caused by irresponsible handling of Covid, etc. But ultimately, I'm a white guy who can't speak for black people, I'm a web developer whose skills are unsuited for helping with Covid, and I've got enough problems and responsibilities in my own life that I can't take on the totalitarianism which is rising on both sides of the political spectrum. It's not within my abilities to save the world. I try to create the change I'm capable of, but at the end of the day I'm no use to humanity if I can't take care of myself.
8. Staying connected: I've been making a concerted effort to show my face on Zoom calls, call people I'm close with, and spend time in person with people (6 feet apart and wearing masks). I've even met new people during the pandemic, and I've kept in contact with some elderly people in my community which has been incredibly rewarding--these are the people most at risk from the pandemic and the dangers of isolation and with the most experience to offer you.
This is just what has been working for me. I hope something here helps someone.
We live in a dark time. Before I had a family I was on track for FIRE so I could exit society and live in peace. But now that I have kids I'm drawn back in and its heartbreaking to see how much worse it is now than when I first decided to opt out.
I don't know how I'm going to guide my children through this new dark age.
I disagree with the statement "most toughest times". Be careful with superlatives. As a child, I underwent chemotherapy. These three months of lockdown were an anoyance, but far from "most toughest times". Really. Put things in perspective, before exaggregating like this.
The comments in this thread are fine.