Hello all! and an update
Feb. 1st, 2021 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arianhwyvarI am delighted that more friends are either beginning to post here, or that I've finally discovered they were here already! Thus I figure I should post an update.
So. It's been almost exactly 11 months in lockdown. March 2, 2020, was the monday I went to work, went to a committee meeting, then came home starting to feel really lousy, fell over and had most of a week of a fever and dry cough before the fever finally broke and it turned into a respiratory thing. Since then I've taken a drive with A in a car a total of 5 times. Most afternoons, we take a 30-45 minute walk around the neighborhood. I realized last week that in 11 months, I had never left the house by myself. Not once. So I took a walk by myself just to be sure I still could. I am wondering how quickly, or not, I'll acclimate back. Though it's still going to be quite a while; older members of my communities are talking about the process for getting their vaccines, but I'll be in the last cohort. And I'm fine with that; I am ok in lockdown. I am a huge introvert, I have a partner I live with, I am not suffering a great deal compared to most folks.
Getting two hours back every day when I used to commute has actually been really nice. Being able to take a walk every day has been great. I obviously had to cancel my gym membership -- all the locations were in Boston, and I've been working at home for 11 months and also haven't set foot on the T -- so I started working (over zoom) with A's trainer, who is great, and I finally have some abs again, and am back up to doing some things with 15 lb dumbbells. I'm still working at the same company, which has been surprisingly good about the get-everyone-who-can-working-from-home thing.
I've been doing new crafting things, mostly with hammering or stamping copper. I've recorded some rounds in parts. I made a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/silverowlcreations) and have been posting several times a month. A couple times a month I've been doing video-chat RP for the one larp I still play, and I'm going to play several virtual larps at Extracon -- I'm excited to see what those will be like. I've participated in a good handful of online SF conventions and have found many things to like about them -- being able to participate in things or with people halfway around the world, not having to pay for a hotel or travel to it, being able to chat and respond to other people during a panel (and in some cases, chat with the presenter if their presentation was pre-recorded, which is actually pretty great). One of my favorites was definitely online Wiscon, which is when I started occasionally posting here again. I'm also very much looking forward to online Boskone in a week and a half, which has a pretty stellar participants lineup.
I've also been able to attend a great many more services with my Havurah than I normally get to during a given year, since they're via Zoom, rather than in a place that can take me 4 hours of travel round trip. I do video-chat-based sessions with my therapist too, and that also works better than I had expected.
I have a joint video chat with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law's family weekly, which is nice, and occasionally have had virtual dinners or chats with a few friends, which is always great and I feel kind of bad that I'm so bad at reaching out and making such things happen. Left to my own devices, my basic inclination is just to curl up into a ball composed of work, reading, and occasionally making things. Though this year I also did some phone banking for the first time. I hate talking on the phone so very much, but it was really important, so I did some of it.
Oh, and we've worked our way through a number of tv shows I had never seen -- Counterpart, and Justified, and Breaking Bad, and we're now more than halfway through Better Call Saul. So all that is pretty much what makes up my life in pandemicland.
So. It's been almost exactly 11 months in lockdown. March 2, 2020, was the monday I went to work, went to a committee meeting, then came home starting to feel really lousy, fell over and had most of a week of a fever and dry cough before the fever finally broke and it turned into a respiratory thing. Since then I've taken a drive with A in a car a total of 5 times. Most afternoons, we take a 30-45 minute walk around the neighborhood. I realized last week that in 11 months, I had never left the house by myself. Not once. So I took a walk by myself just to be sure I still could. I am wondering how quickly, or not, I'll acclimate back. Though it's still going to be quite a while; older members of my communities are talking about the process for getting their vaccines, but I'll be in the last cohort. And I'm fine with that; I am ok in lockdown. I am a huge introvert, I have a partner I live with, I am not suffering a great deal compared to most folks.
Getting two hours back every day when I used to commute has actually been really nice. Being able to take a walk every day has been great. I obviously had to cancel my gym membership -- all the locations were in Boston, and I've been working at home for 11 months and also haven't set foot on the T -- so I started working (over zoom) with A's trainer, who is great, and I finally have some abs again, and am back up to doing some things with 15 lb dumbbells. I'm still working at the same company, which has been surprisingly good about the get-everyone-who-can-working-from-home thing.
I've been doing new crafting things, mostly with hammering or stamping copper. I've recorded some rounds in parts. I made a Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/silverowlcreations) and have been posting several times a month. A couple times a month I've been doing video-chat RP for the one larp I still play, and I'm going to play several virtual larps at Extracon -- I'm excited to see what those will be like. I've participated in a good handful of online SF conventions and have found many things to like about them -- being able to participate in things or with people halfway around the world, not having to pay for a hotel or travel to it, being able to chat and respond to other people during a panel (and in some cases, chat with the presenter if their presentation was pre-recorded, which is actually pretty great). One of my favorites was definitely online Wiscon, which is when I started occasionally posting here again. I'm also very much looking forward to online Boskone in a week and a half, which has a pretty stellar participants lineup.
I've also been able to attend a great many more services with my Havurah than I normally get to during a given year, since they're via Zoom, rather than in a place that can take me 4 hours of travel round trip. I do video-chat-based sessions with my therapist too, and that also works better than I had expected.
I have a joint video chat with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law's family weekly, which is nice, and occasionally have had virtual dinners or chats with a few friends, which is always great and I feel kind of bad that I'm so bad at reaching out and making such things happen. Left to my own devices, my basic inclination is just to curl up into a ball composed of work, reading, and occasionally making things. Though this year I also did some phone banking for the first time. I hate talking on the phone so very much, but it was really important, so I did some of it.
Oh, and we've worked our way through a number of tv shows I had never seen -- Counterpart, and Justified, and Breaking Bad, and we're now more than halfway through Better Call Saul. So all that is pretty much what makes up my life in pandemicland.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-02 08:03 am (UTC)I've been really impressed with many of the virtual conventions I've attended. The panels have actually been better because I can see the panelist's faces, voices are clearer because they're not piped through huge speakers, and there are no distracting lights or noise from the audience. Perhaps best of all, I can see panels that I missed (so long as they were recorded) and don't have to feel so sad that I had to choose between two awesome-sounding panels. Pairing the convention with Discord channels for chatting and commenting during panels was also really nice because someone would generally post the full title & author of the book the panelist just mentioned so I could add it to my reading list, or drop the link to the game that the panelist just enthused about so I could look it up later.