Nine Months In

Today marks month 9 of the pandemic. I think I was told to stay home from work as of the 16th of March, which felt extremely weird to me. I don't know how I thought it to play out, but there's no way I expected we'd still be working from home at Christmas time. As it spread and we saw the impact, obviously I became aware that we'd be lucky to be back up and running by March 2021. That seems to be holding true, probably more like late summer or early fall.

All of it begs the question, how are you holding up?

I think it's fair to have felt every possible bad emotion during the course of spread of it. Disbelief, rage, sorrow, sadness, despair, hopelessness, anger, hostility, gloom and anxiousness.

And I've been to all of those places briefly myself over these 9 months. I am fortunate that I have the ability to pull myself out of the dark places. I have a tendency toward optimism. It's not my nature, but I've learned to fake-it-till-I-make it. I tend to avoid negative people, going even so far as hiding them on Facebook and other social media. I can't let them drag me down. 

Getting through something like this also helps having a spouse or partner with a sense of humor to go through it all. We have to laugh through it all or else we'll both breakdown at the sadness of it all. At the same time, Donna and I are both introverts by nature, so staying home has never been a problem. We've sort of embraced that part of it. We each have separate office spaces, so that makes it easier from a work standpoint. 

As much as I hate all of it, I'm a realist and I realize we really have no choice but to grind out each day, be safe, try and stay positive, work out when and where you can and wear a dang mask. Because a vaccine is on the way and, well, that's progress.

Blogging off...