DH got his first vaccine shot. I’m just a bit away from being completely vaccinated. The US is starting widespread vaccination for all adults in most of the country sometime in mid-April. This is amazing. The prospect of escape lets me reflect. Here are some things I’ve learned.
- I am more productive when I’m not constantly getting random colds and other viruses from students and my kids.
- I am more productive when I don’t have students constantly dropping into my office to say hi or to ask questions (not about the homework because I don’t allow that outside of office hours).
- A lot of what I thought were random colds are actually allergies. Going forward I need to be more proactive with trying allergy medicine when I’m feeling congested and not just assume I have whatever crud is going around.
- I am more productive when I have a reasonable amount of service and some of my lack of productivity these past few years really was because I was overburdened. I also do a lot of service that I don’t get credit for because it’s the “mom” kinds of service of remembering things that need to get done and checking to make sure they got done.
- My children are incredibly resilient and yes I can tell them that I’m working and DC2 is more interesting than my work but I have to get work done, so ask your teacher.
- My kids are much happier people in general when they get up at 7:30 compared to when they get up at 5:30 or even 6.
- I am more productive at home where I have a computer that I have administration privileges over and have Dropbox working. Our department IT is incompetent but I actually knew that before quarantine. But the new thing is that if I work at my computer then I start treating it like a work computer and not just a play computer.
- Gochujang really is a fantastic condiment. We are now going through it faster than we do ketchup.
- Curbside from the grocery store where their own workers do the picking is way better than delivery from instacart. There really are gains to experience (human capital…) from doing something repeatedly and it isn’t completely unskilled labor.
- DC2 doesn’t need to be out of the house to keep from bouncing off the walls, but zie DOES need mental stimulation and probably some conversation (zoom is fine) in order to let us work on work days.
- We’re allowed to ask librarians to pick books off the shelves and hold them for us even if they’re shelved at the library where we picked them up. It seems so lazy! But in a quarantine, it’s great for everyone (especially with curbside pickup). I’m wondering if I should stop doing it when it’s safe to be at the library again– that is, maybe I should go back to picking the books off of shelves myself.
- DH actually can be away from his extended family for a year so long as he gets his weekly conversations in.
- I am reminded at how easy it is for a large propaganda machine to sway [too many] people from being their best selves to their worst selves, even at the cost of their own personal interest. There really must be extremely wealthy super-villains out there who get their jollies by making things worse. Because it’s easy to make things worse and doing so makes them feel powerful. Making things better is harder and can be frustrating.
Grumpy Nation, what has this past year and some change taught you?