March 18 & 19, 2020
The reality of being confined at home and interacting with colleagues and business partners is starting to sink in. Now instead of face-to-face conversations and meetings, I have to contend with video calls, multiple phone calls, text messages in multiple paltforms.
I had a vague notion of perhaps having more me-time not being mobile when the shelter-in-place took effect but reality is, working remotely from home opens new sets of limitations. Thank goodness for technological advances though. I can’t imagine 6.7 million Bay Area residents being able to shelter-in-place and still keep businesses humming. For this, I’m glad technology is doing it’s job. Until, few minutes before my call at 1 pm, our Wifi falters…
Lessons learned:
- Stay calm. Nothing gets resolved with ‘sky-is-falling” attitude.
- Think positive. You’re perspective always get you the result you envision.
- Use the available resources you have. I have the Verizon app on my phone and I checked status. They already knew there was an outage in my location. Pretty cool, huh?
Needless to say, problem got resolved in less than 30 minutes. Phew! Crisis averted.
One of the things I’ve started doing during conference calls is instead of sitting infront of my computer, I stand and move around. I think better on my feet, literally. I’m one of those people who like to take walks when I’m thinking of something important. Now, since I don’t have the luxury, I use every opportunity to get some steps in and think better at the same time.
Source: The New Yorker
I also set my alarm to remind me when to take breaks. I get so engrossed with stuff going on at work, that I forget it’s time for lunch or time to stretch a bit.
I try to avoid looking at the news but I get newsflashes on my phone. Sounds like the federal government is ill-prepared for this pandemic. Healthcare workers are putting out calls for test kits, masks, equipment.
Occurs to me, this country is the richest, most powerful but yet so ill-prepared to combat a viral pandemic. We have all the military arsenal to kill or annihilate an entire continent of our fellow human beings yet we don’t have any preparedness for a viral pandemic that has potential to kill a million of us.
How did this happen? Why did we let it be? We need to act to change this.
It starts from among us, within us.
Time for me to sanitize our home. I can’t rely on the government to keep us safe. Soap and water. That’s all.
