Tag: #WorkingFromHome

  • Landlords

    I got an email yesterday afternoon from my landlord’s property office, informing us that they are going to install a buzzer system in our building, and that we need to be available Saturday morning for the installation. and when I read this email, my first reaction was that this was a lie, as they want to enter our apartment, and try to evict us.

    Yes, I am aware of how much that was a completely irrational response to that email.

    My second reaction was to respond to the email, thanking them for the buzzer, and confirming that we would be home on Saturday.

    But in my defense, we are like the last building in Manhattan that doesn’t have a buzzer, and we have been complaining about it for years.

    I don’t know what it is, but there is something about New York, where you can’t trust your landlord or super. Next to the Mayor, those are the most hated jobs in NYC. In the fifteen years I have lived here, I only know one person who had a positive experience with a landlord. For everyone else, it’s just pure hatred.

    In the end, I try to be fair, balanced in my interactions with our landlord; we have to work together as long as we live here.

  • It’s 2021, Ya’ll!

    And so we are in a new year. Today, Monday the 4th feels like the start of the new year to me. The kid is back in school, remotely that is, and the wife is also back at work, also remotely, but we are all back to the routine.

    Walking our dog around the neighborhood this morning, I saw that the crossing guards are back, as well as the delivery trucks, and people waiting at bus stops. Even the stupid construction on the condo tower behind our building was up and running at 6:30am.

    Everyone is back, and that’s why, for me, it feels like we are all starting this New Year.

    Today is also the day that I will try 30 days of no alcohol. I will jump on the band wagon of everyone else, and have a dry January. I don’t think our drinking is out of control, but the wife and I wanted to start this year off on the right foot with cleaning up our life style. We have put on some Covid weight, and alcohol doesn’t help. And over the holidays, we sure did eat our fair share of cookies, and cakes, and all sorts of other tasty treats that really aren’t good for us. The wife is taking the extra step and is cutting sugar out of the next 30 days. The final step is that we will be doing a 30 day yoga program. Yes, it is a form of exercise that we can do after the kid goes to bed at night, but for me, I need something to help me center and calm my mind down. I am looking for healthier ways to deal with my anxiety.

    We were talking last night, about how everyone does shit like this at the start of the year, and then they give up in February. We seem to be building in our quitting with this 30 system, thus we won’t be upset with ourselves when this ends on February 3rd.

  • Covid-ness is Everywhere

    The world is getting sicker, but a vaccine is on the way. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, but this tunnel has a long way to go. The infection rate is slowing going up in the City, but the bars/restaurants will remain open, and the schools will be back starting on December 7th. If we can make it through the winter and the spring, then we just might have a summer to look forward to.

    And this is the conversation that is happening in my home. Things are awful, BUT they will get better. We have been saying that for nine months. Yesterday, I ended with how we are getting tired of living in a lockdown. Not that I am going to break it, or stop wearing a mask… I’m just tired.

    The kid just this morning said that she was ok with remote learning if it needs to happen. I know she was giving a mature answer, which was she understood that this was the sacrifice she needs to make to keep other people safe, but it did feel just a little like she had given up.

    My wife’s boss told her that she should plan on working remote for at least the first two quarters of 2021, and most likely the 3rd as well. This news felt like a punch in the gut.

    Even if the kid goes back to class “like normal” in September 2021, I don’t know if there will be any work in the arts.

    Covid has stained so much in our lives, and looks like it will for almost another year.

    Trying to stay upbeat here.

  • New Writing Schedule, and Some Inspiration

    Well, the good news is that I think we are finally coming to an understanding of what our daily schedule will be with the wife working at home, the kid remote schooling, and me floating around all of it, while writing when I get a chance.

    I can write this, a blog, when the kid is “in class” and my involvement is at a minimum. Writing in the journal is still during park time, which gives me a solid thirty minutes. Working on fiction is happening during the kid’s hour of TV time in the later afternoon. In the end, I get about two hours of writing during the week. Clearly, I would like more time, but this, right now, is keeping the balancing act working. With this tentative schedule in place, I am feeling a bit more relaxed, and have a reasonable expectation of what I can accomplish in a given week.

    The bonus effect of establishing this “schedule” is that I am now finding that I am inspired to go back to old ideas, and flesh them out more. Notes and sketches that I tucked away months and even years ago, have sprung to a new life, and are interesting to me again. I found myself working on an old story that I had shelved about a year ago, because I thought the idea had run out of steam.

    This isn’t really surprising, nor a revelation, but I had lost inspiration and drive of late. Small changes can make a difference. I have to remind myself that this is a marathon, and will take more time than even I expect.

  • Covid Confession

    This has been a tough and trying day. Nothing really has gone the way any of us have expected.

    Except for the laundry. I got the laundry done on time.

    Today is the wife’s official first day at her new job. Being that she is still working at home, it doesn’t feel like too much has changed.

    We are down to the final 10 days before the kid starts school. And again, as she will be learning from home. It won’t be an enormous change, as she was learning from home in the Spring, so that doesn’t feel like it will change anything.

    Me, on the other hand, each day is pretty much the same. So, not much has changed there.

    Which means we all feel rather stuck. And it isn’t too hard to believe that. We have been doing the lock down for five and a half months now.

    No end in sight. Just plugging away.

    Ahhh…

    When I wake up in the morning, I do have this feeling of dread that there is this mountain of things that I have to get done, and also at the same time, I have the feeling that there is no way I will get them done.

    But I have to make sure the kid is okay, and that the wife is being supported, as she is the bread winner now and going to school at the same time, which is a huge burden/responsibility that can completely stress her out. She’s a good wife and mother.

    I just keep hoping that things will get better; at less stressful.

    One day…