Pandemic Perks

[Ashley]

Covid-19 sucks butts but hopefully we've all had some little things during this ongoing pandemic which have been silver linings brought about by it.

I was talking to someone earlier and mentioned it has been nice that by unexpectedly ending up near home (~10 miles away) I've seen my 4 year old niece more. Took her to the Sea Life Centre last week which she enjoyed and generally popping home, mostly to give my mom a break. She's an easy going child but still 4 at the end of the day and my brother is useless for actually helping out so I go and just take her to the park and play with her for a bit.

I also finally signed up for a PT so hopefully once this is all over I'll be more body positive!

And unexpectedly working has meant I have saved up more for my trip when it finally happens. Will be able to treat myself a bit more when I go, maybe even stay in that hotel from Lost in Translation for a night or two!

What about yourself; have you finally changed a bad habit, found a new hobby, enjoyed working from home?

[Cube]

Me and my fiancee used the time to re-evaluate stuff, we cancelled our wedding (it was provisionally booked, no money had been put down) as we decided saving for a deposit on a house was much more important.

I've been doing more ambitious cooking, done a few recipes using flour/dough which I generally didn't touch before. 

Also started a blog for a few game reviews and food recipes, working on a review for N-Europe at the moment 

[Goafer]

I was planning to do it this year anyway, but only being able to leave the house for exercise early in the lockdown motivated me even more to start cycling again. Whilst most people are complaining about putting weight on over the lockdown, I've lost 3 stone.

I also started playing Dungeons and Dragons just before the lockdown, so that's also been a new thing to keep me sane. Our group have been playing over Skype and have decided to make a podcast of our D&D sessions, with our first episodes coming out very soon. It's called Dice and Desire if anyone wants to check it out. It's me and @ReZourceman from here, the Food Review UK guys and a couple of others.

[Fierce_LiNk]

When the lockdown hit, I ended up joining in with Tim'sTwitterListeningParties, which is basically where people stream or listen to an album together at the same time. I signed up to Twitter specifically for that and it was fantastic to join other listeners, share thoughts and just enjoy music together. As that went on, I slowly decided that I'd like to try and make something myself and I ended up buying a Digital Audio Interface to connect my guitar/bass/drums to the laptop. I dabbled a little here and there, but didn't really get serious with it.

However, about two weeks ago I sat down and came up with one small riff that I thought might lead somewhere. Then, that turned into a bassline, so I recorded that. I had my first full bassline recorded. Then, I figured out some guitar parts to fit alongside that, then I recorded some drums last week. Suddenly, I've made a 4 minute long song that sounded sorta okay-ish. There are timing issues here and there and certain parts aren't as clean as I'd like, and it's not mixed or mastered, but it's there. A few days later, I came up with a second riff which is based on something that I wrote down a few months ago. I've recorded guitar, bass and drums for that, and I'm much more proud of that second attempt than the first. Over the last 5 days, I've put down about 4 or 5 other "half" ideas, and I've got ideas over how to turn one of those half ideas into a bit more than a half idea.

Basically, in the last two weeks, I've made shit tons of progress than I have done in the last decade. 

I think having time on your hands and deciding what you want to do with that time has helped. 

[Will]

This whole thing has been a rollercoaster for me, some really quite bad times.

We had our son during the middle of the lockdown here and due to the circumstances I was in basically got to spend the first two months with him. Since then I’m working from home which means I get to see him anytime I want to take a five minute break. Overall I’d say I’ve been incredibly lucky to get to spend so much time with him and it’s been quite an amazing experience.

[nightwolf]

2020 has been terrible for us as a couple. I cannot for the life of me by arsed to waffle, so here's bullet points:

- I was tested for cancer

- wedding has been cancelled twice

- I'm super ill again so we are fighting for more surgery

- partner lost his job

- Landlord has been a douche for various reasons. 

That said, lockdown has brought about a few nice things. My partner got made redundant so the money has meant we could now afford a house (if we can get 10%). He also took a job closer to home for less pay but I now see him way more than I've ever done in nearly 7 years!

On a personal level my company has now implemented working from home on a permanent basis. For now it's forced but eventually will be half and half. I've wanted this for years with having a chronic illness. So that's a wonderful plus! 

[bob]

Good and bad for me:

• Working from home has been amazing - I didn't exactly have a bad commute before, but just the ability to order stuff and services to your house and be there for the delivery has been a lifechanger
• Extra money- we saved so much money in the first month of lockdown. Not going out and doing things, and my wife saving £40 a week on fuel meant that we had almost double what we usually had left over at the end of the month.
• Talking to family - ironically, i ended up talking to my family way more when we weren't allowed to meet up. Started a weekly video call with my parents and sister, when i was a bit worried about them getting lonely, and it's continued through to today. It's really nice keeping in touch more, when usually I would only talk to them once a month or even less.
• Cooking/buying food - at the start of lockdown, buying food was a nightmare, but it has slowly changed the way we do it, and i don't think we'll go back. I used to buy the food to cook dinner on my way home from work every day. As a result, i used to go to the supermarket 8-10 times a week. Now, we go once a week, and we've had to plan out the weeks meals, rather than deciding what to have on my way home. It's less flexible, but i think with a baby on the way it makes much more sense.

 

 

• My wife conversely, did not enjoy lockdown as much as I did. She liked spending more time with me, but as a teacher, she couldn't really do her job properly, and ended up getting very depressed being cooped up in our house. 
• The whole baby situation is a bit scary, and quite different to how it would be normally. I've only been allowed in one scan, the rest of the time i'm sat in the hospital car park. My wife hasn't met her midwife, who is currently not answering her phone and refusing to reply to messages. I don't know what the situation will be for the actual birth, but at the moment I'm not allowed in the hospital for the build up to the birth, and only allowed in for the brief period when the baby is born. Then I have to leave again. 
• Our main hobby, travelling, obviously was affected massively this year. We had hoped that we could go on one last trip before the baby arrives, perhaps for a week away in Europe, but we ended up doing two days away in Exmouth instead. Also, our planned trip to France that we had booked with some friends got cancelled, and now we aren't sure if we're ever going to be able to see that money again.

 

Overall for me, it was positive (especially since I don't know anyone who has died from the pandemic, thankfully), but I can imagine that I am very lucky, and there are many more that have had a bit of a shit-show.

[Mr_Odwin]

Clearly a difficult line to tread in this thread as you don't want to appear to be too gloating over how well things have turned out for you, when thousands have died, people have lost jobs, and people have really struggled with social aspects ....

But yeah, overall positive for me too. Working from home has been absolutely eye opening. I love the commute of 0 minutes. I love not having the hum of the office. I love stopping for a few minutes to have a chat with the fam. We've used Microsoft Teams a ton to stay in touch with other colleagues. I've started playing Fortnite online with a handful of work friends that previously wouldn't touch it. My productivity has increased. I've missed the free gym at work, but I've been going out for lunch on my bike - somewhere between 5-10 miles.

Financially I think we're better off because of the reduced petrol use, and other outgoings that have dropped. Takeaway consumption increased but other things seem to have balanced that out.

We have a family project to go up a load of peak district peaks that are over 1000 feet. That's fun.

[Will]

1 hour ago, bob said:

The whole baby situation is a bit scary, and quite different to how it would be normally. I've only been allowed in one scan, the rest of the time i'm sat in the hospital car park. My wife hasn't met her midwife, who is currently not answering her phone and refusing to reply to messages. I don't know what the situation will be for the actual birth, but at the moment I'm not allowed in the hospital for the build up to the birth, and only allowed in for the brief period when the baby is born. Then I have to leave again.

Mine was the opposite way round. I was there the whole time and would have been there for the birth but they had to do a cesarean and wouldn’t allow anyone else to be there. It kind of sucked missing out on that but not much you can do.

1 hour ago, bob said:

Our main hobby, travelling, obviously was affected massively this year. We had hoped that we could go on one last trip before the baby arrives, perhaps for a week away in Europe, but we ended up doing two days away in Exmouth instead. Also, our planned trip to France that we had booked with some friends got cancelled, and now we aren't sure if we're ever going to be able to see that money again.

This is another one that’s been tough for us. I usually travel pretty frequently, at least a few times a month and that has all gone now. We wanted to go away before the baby was born but couldn’t, and now nobody can visit us either which means grandparents and other family members are still waiting to meet the baby.

Hoping we can travel again soon, I’m desperate to get out of here for a while.

[Eenuh]

I can't say the lockdown has been very positive for me. Nothing really bad has happened though, just nothing massively positive either haha.

I was already working from home so nothing much changed there. It was nice having @Fierce_LiNk around at home though, but I had to make myself scarce whenever he was teaching online (which was basically 9 am to 4 pm). I spent a lot more time in the garden whenever the weather allowed it, tending to my vegetables (which I was already planning to do before Covid hit, the lockdown just made it harder to get all my supplies). 

We might have saved some petrol money from Jim not having to go into work as much, but I think we just ended up spending that money on take aways haha. 
My work has also been affected by the lockdown, as we are not really getting enough new projects in, so there is the constant fear that I might lose my job or not get paid. 

I missed out on 3 trips to see my family, once in March for my niece's and nephew's birthday, once in May for my sister's hen party and once in June for my sister's (now postponed) wedding. It made me feel quite down, as I wasn't really seeing anyone for months being stuck in the house. Jim and I booked tickets to go to Belgium in August but because of the threat of quarantine, we rebooked Jim's ticket for Christmas. I still went to Belgium and it was lovely to finally see my family again! Last time I saw them was at Christmas, longest time I think I've had to miss them. I got back on Sunday and am now stuck in a spare bedroom because of quarantine rules haha. 

I really hope this pandemic improves soon and that they can get a vaccine ready (I know that will take months though). I'm so fed up with it and tired of being stuck inside. I want to visit people and go places again. And as our wedding is next August, I really hope things improve for the better and life can start returning to normal again (maybe with some changes like more people working from home).  

[Ashley]

5 hours ago, Mr_Odwin said:

Clearly a difficult line to tread in this thread as you don't want to appear to be too gloating over how well things have turned out for you, when thousands have died, people have lost jobs, and people have really struggled with social aspects ....

Oh yeah obviously, but was trying to give people a chance to reflect on some good things, even if minor.