We finished week 2 and now are in week 3 of lockdown. I’m not going to lie, it’s been tough. But we’re grateful that we’re getting better in health, keeping our jobs with flexibility to WFH and moving meetings around.
Last week was tough for me at work as we have all these OKR planning session and everyone seems to want numbers from me for planning purposes. On top of that I had to propose and defend a few suggestions to other teams, so that was extra tiring. I was also quite sick. So after most of the meetings and reviews, I took a day off on Thursday and tried to just rest. That helped a bit. I’m generally just trying not to work too hard these days - I’m normally a pretty hard worker and get upset at myself if I can’t get something achieved immedicately.
This week we got a call from our daycare and got the news that they won’t be open for the entire April. So we have to function for a whole month without childcare help. Although I expected that, I was still pretty shocked that we’d have to do it for much longer and remain sane through all of this. My husband too was quite shocked.
1. Try to be productive, but try to be ok with not being as productive.
It’s hard to both work and take care of a child. It’s even hard for normal people who are just worried about the pandemic and can’t stop reading news and stats. So I’ve been telling myself that it’s totally fine if I’m not as productive. I also have to encourage my husband to work even more efficiently. When in between meetings, we talk to each other about what each of us are about to do. And we help each other prioritize our tasks. For example, I told him I need to focus on getting this document out and I need to run some code to get results. I estimated two hours of focus work, and he covered childcare to let me have the two hours. Same thing with him - he had to have one email out with a longer summary of a research project. He estimated an hour but took longer - I covered childcare during the time and encouraged him to stay very very focused on finishing it. We almost never had to help each other work before. In a time like this, it’s nice to keep each other motivated.
I also have to just be ok with not acomplishing very much each day. I tell myself that no one is going to be both a great mom and a great worker at the same time, so if I can be a good worker while I work, it’s good enough.
2. I need a break but it’s so hard to get the opportunity. Being outside still helps, though.
My husband has been doing more meditation than he normally does and I’ve been fighting with him about it since he always joins these annoying group sessions at 6PM which is our dinner time! While I need to control my tempor, I realized I was just jealous he has something “fun” to do. I realized what usually makes me happy after a tiring day is to go to a nice restaurant and eat well. Sadly I don’t think I’m getting that any time soon. But maybe I can get a fancy takeout?
One thing that is wonderful is being outside. I still take my calls outside in the yard with my son. And yesterday we went out for a very short hike of 20 minutes. It was still very wonderful, though. Our dog was super happy and we were happy to see that too.
3. Having a project is fun.
I made a super simple website to track my county’s Covid-19 confirmed cases. I haven’t really touched Javascript in a very long time, and hosting data in Firebase’s real time DB (with Google Sheets sync) was a new experience for me. Hacking on these new projects always made me happy and I’m happy that this time it was something relevant. I plan to add a few more analyses to the site this weekend before I post it to Nextdoor.
Actually the backstory of making this chart was that I wanted to prove a point to some dumb question on Nextdoor claiming that the growth wasn’t significant - so I made a quick chart with Google Sheets to support my point. Then after my post, I kept getting private messages from neighbors to update my sheet LOL.
4. We try to still pay people.
We’re starting to see a lot of businesses struggling - other than restaurants and shops. Our daycare didn’t ask but did mention that they do need money to pay the workers to survive. Since both of us didn’t have any pay reduction, we quickly decided we would pay our daycare normally since we really do want/need them to be there when this thing is over.
We struggled to decide whether to keep paying our cleaners since we use the cleaning service not-too-frequently. We eventually decided to keep having them come to clean, pay them a bit more than usual, and try to leave the house and not be in the same space. The cleaners are so so so thankful for our business and we are honestly so thankful for their work, since we have zero energy left to clean. We have no idea if this is spreading the disease but we genuinely needed it.
I don’t have a good ending to this update. But we are well and surviving, and I see this thing will have to go on for much longer…