I need to know how you're doing during the pandemic

[andrewducker]

Poll #24532

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 99

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Working from home

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I work from home and like it
51 (52.0%)

I work from home and dislike it
8 (8.2%)

I go into an office, and wish I worked from home
2 (2.0%)

I go into an office, and am happy about that
3 (3.1%)

I don't work
24 (24.5%)

SEWIWEIC
10 (10.2%)

Cinemas!

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I've already been!
2 (2.0%)

I'm going to go during a quiet showing
8 (8.1%)

Not until there's a vaccine
68 (68.7%)

SEWIWEIC
21 (21.2%)

Restaurants/Bars

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I've already been!
27 (27.3%)

I'm going to go during a quiet time
10 (10.1%)

Not until there's a vaccine
50 (50.5%)

SEWIWEIC
12 (12.1%)

Overall

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I'm feeling better than I was before the pandemic
22 (22.4%)

I'm feeling worse than I was before the pandemic
57 (58.2%)

SEWIWEIC
19 (19.4%)

Comments

[drplokta]

I do some self-employed consultancy, generally work from home but used to go into London once or twice a month for meetings, and haven’t done so since March.

[naath]

I wish I could see my colleagues... occasionally, but I like WFH, it avoids commuting hassle.

I am about to need to isolate for 3 months for medical reasons, joy. Not.

And I broke my arm, so I'm not "better" than before because MY ARM HURTS but that's not reall pandemic related.

[altamira16]

I put down that I dislike work from home. My commute was long, but I miss the coworkers.

[vereybowring]

Yeah due to my situation the biggest change I had for the pandemic was moving to online grocery shopping.
Social anxiety may be a pain, but the advantage right now of not wanting to be around people is quite protective lol

[f4f3]

As far as work goes, I'm happier than I was before the pandemic, but that's unrelated to the working from home.

[rmc28]

I quite like working from home, I don't actively dislike it and it has its conveniences, but I would probably prefer to work in the office.

Cinemas, restaurants, bars, anything optional which involves being in an enclosed space with people from multiple other households for a long time: nope nope nope. Not until one of:

• a vaccine
• a very very low case incidence locally (zero or close to for >2 weeks, with no imminent influx of students)
• a test and trace system I feel confident in, which includes proactive testing of healthcare, teaching & other customer-facing staff on a regular basis.

Overall: I'm SO TIRED. I've been working full-time and attempting a mediocre amount of TA-ing for the kids, and I'm sending my kids back to school next week, assuming cases don't rise too fast. It's going to be wild, having actual hours at a time with no children in the house.

[sea_of_crises]

I thought I’d be more productive when our daughter went back to school. However what actually happened was that once the motivational stress of holding it all together for her was gone I pretty much fell over sideways. It all kinda caught up with me at that point.

[white_hart]

I don't *love* working from home but in the current situation I definitely prefer it and am not looking forward to having to go back into the office a couple of days a week. And my mental health is completely shot right now, though initially my anxiety reduced when I was working from home.

[bohemiancoast]

All the thoughts.

I have worked from home for ages and the pandemic didn't change that - but having a final year uni student and another person also working from this house became hard.

Cinemas - I'd go if we had NZ levels of infection.

bars and restaurants - I'd turn straight round if I thought they were crowded. I've been a few times to fairly empty restaurants and pubs.

Overall it's neutral except that I have higher anxiety and poor sleep - there are a lot of things I like better about this world and, in particular, a massive reduction in commuting should be good for local communities and the planet and we should lean into that.

[cdave]

It's not that the lack of commute means I'm spending more time in my local community. I've completely disengaged from almost anything (socialising, shopping, groceries, etc.) that's not inside my computer, until there's a vaccine or NZ infection level.
Oh, wait, I did do one Kickstarter to help keep Living Under One Sun café from going under.

[rhythmaning]

1. I'm now officially retired; before that I worked from home, mostly. The lockdown didn't fundamentally change how I spent my days - other than severely limiting the things I might do and places I might go. No libraries, art galleries [going to the National Gallery a couple of weeks ago was actually quite emotional!]

2. Cinemas - undoubtedly at some point I will go - but I will wait for a quiet showing; and I've no idea when I'll feel comfortable with that!

3. Pubs/restaurants - I have already been - but in quiet times only! Last weekend a friend and I went to Oban, and bars and restaurants were busy - and it felt challenging and the opposite of relaxing. One restaurant then seated us in a very quiet corner, which was blissful! We both wished we'd gone self-catering, frankly...

4. Overall... I ticked "worse" because the cultural and social things I've missed, I've missed *a lot*. Living alone, there were three months when I think I only had two off-line, face-to-face conversations with friends - both of whom I had bumped into in the street. Zoom, WhatsApp and the phone are fine but they don't really do it for me. I don't really get lonely (I'm very happy in my own company) but not having the option to see others was hard. It was gigs which I seemed to miss most - and previously I hadn't really appreciated the social aspect of sitting listening to music , even if I weren't with friends.

[gingicat]

I like working from home overall:
- when I take a break away from my desk to do kid-related things, it's a REAL break and not stolen time.
- more housework gets done.
- incentive to make my living room a far nicer space.
- better, if different, connection with my teen and my tween.
- no commute! (Though, I drive my roommate to and from work on her in-office days.)

Family has gone to empty-of-customers restaurants. I have not.

Overall, I miss in-person interactions, I miss weekends at MiL's house, I'm not happy about upcoming High Holiday loneliness, and the political climate is shit.

[cosmolinguist]

I work, but not in an office or at home. I'm walking to work, I won't get a bus while masks are so unenforced.

[darkoshi]

> I work, but not in an office or at home.

That totally should have been one of the poll choices. But I didn't notice its absence until reading this comment.

[cmcmck]

I'm sorta retired but such work as I do (historical research,articles and reviews) is done from home.

[agoodwinsmith]

My life changed a lot a few years ago, and then Lorne died, so the pandemic did not change much for me when it locked us down. I wear a mask when I go in stores; I mostly go in grocery stores. Mom and I behave as a family unit even though we have two dwellings (we were cheating, so it was just better to calculate it into our behaviour). We've been to restaurants/pubs patios that have well-spaced tables, and one restaurant that had front to back open windows and doors and well-spaced tables. When winter comes again (sooner than wanted), it will be back to picking up take out.

No going into theatres or plague tubes (airplanes) or other closed spaces until a vaccine. I know I am fortunate that I do not need to return to work in an office, riding transit, and so on.

I am feeling about the same as before the pandemic, but I have just had an all-clear on a cancer investigation, so that euphoria may be tinging my view. I am exhausted from all the previous anxiety, though, which was/is a continuation since the original big change.

[rmc28]

Congratulations on your all-clear!

(cancer survivor, approaching my 5-years-since-remission milestone)

[strange_complex]

Cinemas and restaurants - I think my position is the rather marginal one of not being keen enough to instigate a trip of my own accord, but probably being willing to give it a go if someone else invited me (so that I knew they were already up for it) and the film or dinner on offer was sufficiently tempting. But that hasn't happened yet!

[liv]

Excellent poll! I've been working from home since mid-March and will likely stay here until at least January, possibly even longer. Workwise this is absolutely fine, I am just as productive, I get about 90% of the work social and collaborative contact I would have had in the before times, and I save myself 15 hours a week of commuting time.

I'm not doing cinemas or eat-in restaurants until there's a vaccine or genuinely Covid-zero. Those are not things that were ever really important to me so they're not worth a risk of illness and death. I do get takeaway to satisfy my cooked-by-someone-else food desire, which is not without risk if one of the staff preparing the food is infected but seems acceptable to me.

I miss museums and galleries more, and I'm somewhat tempted by a couple of really good London exhibitions that have reopened from earlier in the year, but not enough to actually risk public transport and spending hours in the enclosed space of a museum. I also miss attending in person services; right now my denomination has closed all its synagogues. Doing the High Holy Days online is going to be harder, I think, than half a year without a restaurant meal. I haven't yet worked out what I will do if my synagogue goes back to in person before it seems safe to me.

I could WFH forever, I think. (Whether work will agree to that I don't know.) But I would like to be working from home in a context where I could go somewhere other than my house at weekends! The key thing that's making me feel worse is not seeing my friends and particularly my partners from the other household. I'm getting to the point where I'm about to crack and start travelling to see out-of-town people, or meeting up indoors. That will happen far sooner than going to any cinemas or other entertainment venues.

[maia]

I can't afford to go to cinemas and restaurants anyway, and I've no interest in going to bars, so the pandemic changes nothing in that respect.

[frith]

My work is 90% outdoors and alone. The indoor periods are sparsely populated.
The cinema here was almost empty pre-pandemic, there hasn't been anything worth going to see since it reopened a few months ago.

[ggreig]

Having started a new job, and had my management change since the interview, I've never met any of my colleagues in real life. This is the way I've always worked (here)!

SEWIWEIC

[kmusser]

Restaurants/Bars - I'm ok with if they're outside and have been twice, inside is waiting till a vaccine.

Overall - I'm ok with the physical isolation, I'm pretty damn introverted and kind of like being home all the time. What's getting me down is all the death, I just lost my mother-in-law, it feels like most people I know have lost a family member - and none of us can do any of the usual mourning things that people do, and there's this dread of wondering who's going to be next - it's mentally exhausting. I just really want to be able to hug people.

Re: SEWIWEIC

[cosmolinguist]

I know virtual hugs aren't the same but I'm thinking of you. <3

Restaurants/Bars

[lsanderson]

I ate at one restaurant election day when I worked all day on the election and ate inside out of the heat. I've been to two breweries too, although there I sat outside.

[autopope]

No option for "I never go to [cinemas/restaurants/etc]".

In my case, cinemas: I have only 22 degrees' field of vision in one eye (due to severe tunnel vision) and the other eye has a warped macula. I basically gave up on movies a decade or two ago because all jerkycam all of the time, with muddy/dark lighting and colour palettes, turn them into a disorienting blur I can't get anything out of.

[theandrewhickey]

You *might* find them more accessible now. cosmolinguist is legally blind, but in the last few years has been able to get quite a bit more than she used to out of the cinema now that audio description is, if not standard at all cinemas at least usually available at most of them. (Sorry if this is a grandmother-sucking-eggs level comment, but it's amazing how many people with poor vision are unaware of this -- though you may, of course, be someone for whom audio description doesn't help.)

[theandrewhickey]

All my income is from my podcast and writing, and I do all that from home -- and one big reason I get all my income that way is that I found working from an office completely incompatible with my own mental health.
Not doing *anything* to risk my health until there's a vaccine, as I am in several high-risk groups and like having lungs. I've not left the house other than to walk the dog since March 10, and even there I've stayed on our side street and not gone onto the main road because of all the humans.

[davidcook]

Overall - I'm feeling about the same as before, not particularly better or worse.

[pink_halen]

I have never had a traditional 9 to 5 job.
I technically have work to do but not in the same sense.

Theaters are not open here but there hasn't been movies that I have really wanted to see lately. It is all junk. I always went on off hours when there were only a few people there.

I have been to restaurants. They have mostly been quiet. I haven't gone to any that are seating outside. I don't feel unsafe. One Mexican restaurant didn't have as good a food as in the past but I think that is because they don't have the volume and turn over so they don't make as much and it sits longer.

Many of my favorite restaurants have closed permanently.

Bars are a special problem. I don't go to drink I go for social activity. The current plan in Colorado is to make a reservation. You are escorted to a table and a waiter brings your drinks. If I am just going for the drink I can drink at home a lot cheaper. I need to meet people. It is no fun to sit by myself.

[dreema]

I've been working from home since lockdown started, had to set up a separate desk in the spare room to maintain the work/notwork thing. Overall i can do about 50% of what i normally do from the house, but some of what i normally do involves physically being at computers to fix them. While it would have been great to do this during summer holidays, for example, work didn't process my risk assessment (classed as high risk) until after the general unwashed went back in the building, and as such they're not social distancing/masking. So while i did about a week in the 'office' it was behind a locked door, and didn't really feel that great. Plus stress levels went through the roof because everyone was wanting stuff done that hadn't been done since March, couldn't be done because social distancing/risk assessment meant i had to be alone in a room, and that wasn't going to happen till gone 4, and i only work till 5, so yeah, that's where that went. Some users being 'incompetent' (their words, not mine) meant rather than blowing up and losing my job, i took a week and a half off. No idea if things will have changed, but i'm going to start back wfh as of monday.

Cinemas, well don't really go to the cinema anyway, was a once in an every few months thing, so hasn't really changed.

Restaurants/Bars. Don't usually do bars as such, and restaurants, well i went to a 5guys in ft kinnaird with a friend the other week, while it was nice to eat out, was kinda stressy as people weren't keeping distance in the queues and stuff, probably won't be doing that again in a hurry.

Overall, probably about the same. I'm missing biking into the office as a way of getting exercise, but i'm also not missing being in the office having to deal with our userbase. I'm kinda missing going out with friends, it's pretty sporadic just now, and i've definately not been on any longer trips/overnights away since lockdown started. I think i should definately have taken time off earlier, i was on reduced hours in march to use up annual leave, but hadn't taken a break as such since April.

I'm feeling X than I was before the pandemic

[cdave]

Missing option: about the same.
#NewNormal #ReversionToTheEmotionalMean