Tag: working at home

I’ll update more this weekend, I swear.

I’m still working from home, and I’m grateful for the paycheck, (and hey, isn’t it awesome how the US ties our health care to employment, so we just threw 10 million people out of work and also off health insurance during a pandemic?)

As I’ve mentioned, I’m a contractor and have been for years, and normally it’s fine, but this week two things happened: I participated in a conference call with the company where I work (not my employer) and heard what they’re doing for their employees to help them out, and I got an email from my own employer.

The contrast was, um, striking. The employees are getting cash, extra paid time off, flexible schedules where possible. Someone asked if the company would do anything for the many, many contractors who work alongside the employees, and the answer was, “We’re trying to keep them working.” In other words, nope.

My own employer, source of my paycheck and health insurance, emailed us to say that they’re not doing anything extra for us, but hey, if our contracted positions go away we can always apply for unemployment, and good luck with health insurance. So, yeah, that was this week.

By yesterday I really could feel my nerves fraying; I think we’re all just starting to wrap our minds around the fact that the normal we knew before is never going to come back in quite the same way. We’ll get through it, most of us, but we’ll never be the same.

A friend shared a wonderful, darkly hilarious and profane essay by Chuck Wendig on Facebook. I’ve shared the link to it below; go read it. The entire essay resonated with me, but this part in particular:

” You cannot meet abnormality with increased normalcy. It just doesn’t work. There’s no countermanding it that way. We’re told we can be more productive, that we’re all work-from-home now, but lemme tell you: this isn’t your average way to work-from-home. This isn’t how to accelerate productivity. It’s like being told to work-from-home during a locust plague and a forest fire.“

Read the entire excellent essay here.

The First Weekend in Captivity.

My downstairs neighbor was sitting outside again, alone, when she called to me. Her company had gone home, and she was visibly more relaxed and pleasant. So I’m going to chalk up her weird behavior to the tension of house guests that overstayed their welcome and were on her last nerve, and forgive and forget.

The work laptop and the Elderly iMac (circa 2011) traded places, and I had my desk back for the weekend. I’ll swap them again in the morning, but it’s important to me to have MY STUFF in its normal place during my personal time. When this is over, assuming there is an “over,” and assuming I still have a job at the other end, all things I cannot count on at the moment, I’m buying myself a new, bigger, better iMac. I have been saving toward one, but under the circumstances I think I’d better hold onto that cash.

I cleaned the house like a madwoman, including deep cleaning Ellie’s bathroom. A large cat with hairy paws tracks litter everywhere, and it’s gross.

Before the virus hit the fan, so to speak, I had started turning my spare room/”office”/general crap catcher into a Disney-themed home office, and finally hung the Disney themed art I’d collected at various festivals.

Snow White is a digital image I got for being a passholder, or credit card holder, or something. The Walt Disney quote actually came from Amazon, which is a surprising resource for cool Disney art.
I bought this print at this year’s Epcot Festival of the Arts. This artist also has a really cool print of Walt and Steamboat Willy. I covet it, but I’m not buying art at the moment.

At the time I had planned to create a Disney blog as well, but that’s on hold.

And we had confirmation that the runDisney Star Wars Weekend has been canceled. Not postponed, not “to be rescheduled TBD,” but nope, it’s not going to happen in 2020, and we’re giving everyone their registration fees back.

That’s both disappointing to me personally, because I was excited about that 5k, but an alarming sign of how long we may be living like this. Although Disney World is officially closed through the end of March, they went ahead and sent the college program kids home when the parks closed, and now the cancellation of a major event in mid-April is a clue that they don’t anticipate reopening anytime soon.

It’s the uncertainty of everything that is the hardest to deal with. I have put the balcony project on hold for the time being. I can’t be sure how long I’ll have a paycheck, so yeah, that nasty old carpet can just stay there for now. If I do get laid off, I may tackle it myself. The idea of ripping up something I hate feels really satisfying and would be a great stress reliever.

In the meantime, while I wait to see what the future will bring, I’m going to organize my photos and plan my Disney blog, because this will be over someday.

I couldn’t find a taker for the old futon, so yeah, I have an office couch.

It’s hard to see the posters over the couch, sorry about the glare, but they were actually quite cheap and cool and from Amazon.

I’m Old. How old are you? I’m old enough to remember Eastern Airlines. And the coordinating Delta poster from 1971? How could I resist?

I’m on a no frivolous spending program for the foreseeable future, but I foresee some classy Disney themed throw pillows replacing the existing ones from Ikea. I think this one and this one would work, and I can see myself knitting a few pillow covers to mix with the Disney-themed pillows.

So, I have some plans to cope with this weird new world. Tomorrow, back to back to back conference calls start at 8:30 a.m., and we’ll get an update on the company’s plan on how we’ll cope, and yeah, it’s all totally fine!!

via GIPHY