I am loving quarantine, but no good way to admit it?

[Anonymous]

My office is talking about forcing people back to work in the near future. It is freaking me out and makes me appreciate the current stay at home order for now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My office is talking about forcing people back to work in the near future. It is freaking me out and makes me appreciate the current stay at home order for now.

The blood of everyone who kills themselves over this isolation is on your hands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah luckily our district is scheduling PE and art via zoom, it’s high time!
I don’t understand why the librarian is not doing zoom read alouds.
I am definitely applying for jobs in the district once the crisis is over.

Hi, I just wanted to insert here that I am a librarian and I have been desperately trying to host classes but have not yet been allowed to by my administration.

[Anonymous]

My life is better than ever. I have an au pair so sufficient childcare. My expenses have plummeted and we are holing away tons of money. Our long commute isn't happening. I have time to bake bread and do other more elaborate cooking projects. I'm so happy!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah luckily our district is scheduling PE and art via zoom, it’s high time!
I don’t understand why the librarian is not doing zoom read alouds.
I am definitely applying for jobs in the district once the crisis is over.

My friend works for a literacy non-profit that is doing online read alouds, but it requires a lot of advance work to get approval from the publishers of each book she reads. If the "performance" is recorded and posted online you get into copyright/royalties etc so it's not as simple as oh just read a book for the kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My office is talking about forcing people back to work in the near future. It is freaking me out and makes me appreciate the current stay at home order for now.

The blood of everyone who kills themselves over this isolation is on your hands.

Uh, no. Pick up a phone, Facetime, chat rooms - people are not living in solitary confinement. If they want social interaction, they can get it. If you are concerned about someone falling into a depression and committing suicide - then reach out to them. Yes, even go over and see them if you are actually concerned about a specific person vs. a boogeyman. On the other hand, there are thousands of people who have no choice to catch a virus and die if we are forced out of social distancing - not to mention the thousands who will not be able to get adequate medical care for otherwise routine issues (appendicitis, broken legs, RSV) when our hospitals are overrun with virus patients.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My office is talking about forcing people back to work in the near future. It is freaking me out and makes me appreciate the current stay at home order for now.

The blood of everyone who kills themselves over this isolation is on your hands.

This is an insane response to a perfectly reasonable post.

[Anonymous]

On balance - this life is not so bad - I do miss work chats and lunches. But my kids are more relaxed, my spouse is more relaxed - we are having more family time - my kids are actually doing better and more focused in school because I have the time to help keep them on track, and they don't have as much wasted school time - i.e. the long bus rides, the moving between classes, general, usual mayhem in the classroom. I also miss vacation travel - but alot of what I like about vacation travel is being able to spend relaxed time with spouse and kids, which we are now getting by being quarantined. Because spouse and I are stuck at home together, we have the time to have all those conversations that we've avoided in the past through being so busy - so we are communicating and being kind to each other in ways we didn't before. I am spending more time on Facetime with my parents - which they appreciate so much and I didn't have time to do before.

Don't get me wrong - I hate that there is so much suffering caused by the quarantine, and the sicknesses and death - and I hope to goodness it ends soon with therapeutics, testing, and vaccination. But there has been a silver lining.

[Anonymous]

OP, I feel similarly, although I do not enjoy the reason for it. The point is not that I want quarantine to continue or this pandemic to be here. It has hit home for us in a tragic way too, with one parent lost.

BUT, what it has done has shown me that we have not been prioritizing our family life and we have all been suffering from it. DH commutes to another city every other week, I am constantly juggling that with my own work travel, commute, getting kids to different activities and have felt constantly stressed and pull in multiple directions. Hiring babysitters so i can go to a work event at night; juggling trips; being short and impatient with my kids since I am up late working. I drink more to deal with stress and then feel like crap. I spend 2 hours a day in the car instead of 2 hours a day walking and cooking a good dinner.

Now I'm still working from home, but far less. We are spending family time together much more. I exercise in some form every day. What I take away from this is what we must change our situation so that we have jobs and a life in the same city and we can work 9-5 or 9-6 most of the time and spend more quality time with our children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah luckily our district is scheduling PE and art via zoom, it’s high time!
I don’t understand why the librarian is not doing zoom read alouds.
I am definitely applying for jobs in the district once the crisis is over.

Hi, I just wanted to insert here that I am a librarian and I have been desperately trying to host classes but have not yet been allowed to by my administration.

I saw that some authors/publishers were waiving copyright/rights requirements during this period.

Our school is not recording calls (at least they say they're not) but I thought that was because of kid privacy.