Isolation Experience Comparisons

I have been a bad citizen : (

I broke my self quarantine a handful of times. Besides getting out for a casual stroll or groceries, I commuted a couple of times to the office when the current status of my projects at work required me to do so.

Admittedly this gave me a legitimate reason to go out and I was pretty curious how the city would look like after personally being in the same neighbourhood over the last 60-70 odd days.

My new project required some equipment and resourcing so I needed to get that settled on on day. During a video call with my new teammate I noticed his background was not the background of a random home, but recognized that as our office. Turns out he lives pretty near the office and used that as a reason to go in when no one else was. To be fair if everyone is self isolating, he is basically isolated in an empty office.

Now I had two reasons to go, one to get my equipment, another to collaborate together and solve our tasks. Practically and physically distanced of course.

I would say I am doing pretty well two months in quarantine. This is all due to establishing and sticking to a routine that will keep us sane and accountable. For the things we had in our previous lifestyles before quarantine, if they are such a necessity but are made inaccessible due to this pandemic you find a way to do so.

This for me was exercise, eating healthfully, finding a replacement for how I would do my hobbies (TaeKwonDo), working on some hobby coding, reading and writing on this blog and quality time to catchup with friends and family (Again, socially distanced). I would say I like this new normal and am pretty happy with myself.

Still there was an itch of curiosity to scratch to observe the state of our office and city.

During my second day in office collaborating with my teammate another of our common friend/coworker decided show up.

Just at a glance seeing him, who I last saw and hung out with 8 weeks prior was there a noticeable difference. After 60 so odd days a person can change ._.

Quarantine did not treat him very well, for once a young focused, fit looking, top performing individual is now quite a dishevelled, anxious, ill-groomed ghost of a shell. Sharing a bit of our experiences in self-isolating at home it really depends on how they’ve set up their systems.

The nature of our work can be pretty intense and he is certainly doing his best to be at home and try to work, but we can all have distractions. So, intense work coupled with the ease of home distractions, growing anxieties either COVID induced or just brought more into light in this situation really changed my colleague. We are glad to see eachother if only to catchup and have a little serendipity in our week

A big part of our lives are our routines and finding new replacements or substitutes. Before he had a nice lifestyle and ways to destress and enjoy himself outside of work. He enjoyed physical activities such as organized team sports and swimming which unfortunately could not continue to operate, unlike me his activities could not be easily replaced. Each day and week he disclosed that he let himself go bit by bit. It has gotten to the point where he acknowledges that his performance and productivity is heavily impacted. Once a person who I admired for his sheer focus engaged for 3+ hours at a screen coding without taking a break now feels distressed by any notification and requiring frequent breaks to relax his brain.

Understandably our employer knows many people will have their productivity impacted and won’t hold that against us. It just shows a huge difference how people can be affected by quarantine.

It showed my naiveté that everyone should have adjusted to it by now and prospered from it like me.

It hurts me to see a friend like this. I can only hope that he finds some way to fully decompress and relax. Gain the fortitude to push through this quarantine so that he can re-establish his positive habits again. If I would equate compound interest to our situations, compound interest can go the other way.

It highlighted that I am pretty disconnected from this situation, especially so since I purposefully limit my internet and social media time.

In fact we are all more disconnected from reality more-so than even in this isolation.