What has the pandemic taught you?

Here are some of my experiences

- Working from home (as a Software Engineer) as a remote seems open to me. I seem to be a lot more productive. I might consider moving to a rural place. - I have had more interactions with friends and family by having video conferencing beers and dinners. - I spend at least an hour a day doing a workout or yoga on day on YouTube. I spent that time in commuting to/back from work. - I am excited that I can attend conferences remotely. - I enjoy the fresher air️

Things that I miss - I miss sitting in a coffee shop. - I enjoy traveling and staying at AirBNBs. That is not going to happen for sometime. - Hiking trails are either closed or overcrowded.

I'm now more viscerally aware of the fragility, the vulnerability, of our complex structures, our leaders, our lives. Of the rigidity and inertia that keeps us from responding appropriately, in advance, to threats until they become too real.

This chance has and will cost us a lot. Rather than running from what we've felt and seen, I hope we'll take this chance to reflect and then to make some big, obvious, essential changes. That would be easier than the alternative.

It was reinforced for me that most people can’t have a discussion due to emotions and that more people than I expected expect the government to solve their problems. Any time someone simply tries to consider people’s livelihoods vs lockdown and the trade offs, that someone is practically a mass murderer. And what feels like the vast majority of people expecting the government to fix everything.

The pandemic has taught me that I spent time doing busy work because I didn't want to face my emotions.

(Dane here)

I loved working from home, running a VM with a setup for work works surprisingly well.

I hate not seeing other people in the flesh. Not that I need it every day or even every week, but a month is far too long. And online, even with video doesn't work as a replacement (part of this, is suspect, is the crappy quality of every online service videos stream. I pay for Zoom, and even they can't ensure smooth HD video). That was not exactly the lesson I suspected I would learn, as a nerd.

Every volunteer organization is shut down around here, as are all museums and libraries; bars, coffee shops and restaurants; and any other entertainment venue. That means that the only thing to do is go look at nature, which gets boring after the fifth identical tree. When this is over I kinda hope they are all paved over.

Finally, I learned how pointless our politicians are, since every single party voted in favor of the bills that strips us of essential freedoms. We are due to have an election within 3 years, but there is essentially no way for me to register my disapproval in a democratic way. Not that it would matter: our PMs approval ratings have exploded, because they always do that when there is a crisis. People forgot that it was her inability to handle it correctly back in February that send us into this disaster.

It may sound strange to some people, but staying at home actually made me more productive. I got more things (work and my own side projects) done in the past month. Except for me missing eating out at cafes, going to the theaters and people watching, I found a lot less distracted working from home.

It opened up opportunties that didn't exist before. It taught me to keep my eyes open.

that governments oversell themselves