It just hit midnight Friday night. I was supposed to begin working from home Wednesday, but technical issues with my work-issued laptop meant I was in the office on Wednesday and Thursday, but the company (especially our seriously hard-working IT team) worked super hard to get everyone working at home if he or she could do it. It strongly urged us all, if we could, to stay away from the office.
There are people who have to be onsite (although I’d argue that our senior leadership is not among them). We get a lot of money in and we send a lot of money out every day, and people have to be there to disburse it and to collect it. We’re nearly all virtual desktopping now, so some tech people have to be onsite to manage that.
Still, it’s going to be eerily ghost-town-like for the foreseeable future.
I live alone, which is a mixed blessing at a time like this. I’m seriously glad I don’t have a roomie (or worse: roomies. Crush Girl has multiple roomies, she tells me), but I suppose a spouse would make this situation better.
I easily have enough food in this house for a few weeks. The pitfall is going to be not eating it all at once. I’m only half-joking. Can’t believe how much I’ve eaten in the last week.
I’m strategizing ways to keep myself healthy and happy during this weirdness. Wednesday night, I took a very long walk through the neighborhood, late at night when I wouldn’t run into people. Got through a bunch of podcasts, got drizzled on ever so slightly, breathed the fresh air, soaked up the night. It felt good, and it’s going to have to be part of my survival plan.
They’ve closed the parks on this island, but the beaches are still up for debate. If I go early enough, just before the sun’s coming up, I know I can stay far away from others and get a decent half hour in the brine. I’m hoping, anyway. That’s at my main beach, which is right in Honolulu itself. There are other options, beaches not attached to parks, but most of them are a bit of a drive. Probably not feasible on days when I work.
I’m so grateful for my employers’ keeping us working. I know not everyone’s so lucky. I can’t guarantee we’ll all still be working when this finally winds down, but for now I’m fairly secure.
I’ll share more about what I’m doing to keep myself sane over the next few days. One part of the strategy is to write a little something in this space each evening unless I’m super tired. Meanwhile, I hope anyone reading this is staying connected to someone. Please reach out if you’re not. Nobody needs to go through this alone.