Quarantine life has hit all of us pretty drastically. At first, it was a bit of a shock to realize that businesses were even thinking about shutting down. “Is this real?” “There’s no way the virus could be that deadly, right?” “Has anything like this ever happened to this country before?” I got all of those answers pretty quickly once our CEO, Jon Bach, gave us a call to action and decided that those that could work out of their homes would.
Routine was the most important thing to nail down first. We spend the first few hours of the day split between math on this school app called Prodigy, reading time (we’re currently reading Roald Dahl’s “The BFG” for my 4th grader, and Frank Herbet’s “Dune” for my 7th grader) & School packets from the teacher. The teachers helped with this, by sending word docs with what their ideal daily schedule should look like, and we resisted the urge to treat the daily schedule like a weekend with later bedtimes. We tried to make sure we stuck to a normal/regular bedtime.
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Challenges hit us further when mom was exposed to Covid-19. Mom works at a hospital, so she’s on the frontline. Our job as a family is to support her, and that meant that I had to keep the kids with me and away for a bit, as we have a Type 1 diabetic at home. Going out to get food and supplies, and insulin refills came with much more caution than normal, and sometimes even anxiety. Then the school districts where I live were canceled for the rest of the year. So, suddenly, we’re working from home with a packet from the teacher, kids in tow, and sorting out food, school, and work at the same time (Teachers deserve a raise!) on top of the normal diabetic routine we already had.
Motivation for the kids to get up and go and try to be at least a little less restless. We have been riding our bikes and playing basketball 3-4 times a week so far, and the weather has generously cooperated with lots of sun! A break in their routine from school meant that they were happy to be home and maybe even gaming a little more, but getting that time outside out in the world back was initially a challenge: how do we do so carefully? Where can we go now? The solution, for us, was hopping on bicycles and just finding the closest city trail, and riding! It’s been a pretty fun experience riding with my children instead of alone, and now I don’t want to go back!
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Once we had it down, after a few weeks things became quite a bit easier. However, I miss my Puget Team members.more and more the longer we go without seeing them. It’s pretty cheesy to think of my coworkers as family, but I’m lucky to be working around a group of people that genuinely care about me, so I’ve really missed being able to talk to people all day, joke with my work friends, and I’ve only been able to get in to the office once to say hey. I’m really looking forward to the day where I can see everybody again!
Once Washington state gets back to normal, things may never be the same, but I know I’ll never take for granted my friends and team here at Puget Systems, and the interesting journey we all had to take to get through the pandemic together.