In the last 15 months, I lost about 25 lbs. I had it pretty well compared to most, and consider myself lucky.
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Same here.
I did pick up basic computer stuff, though. And that was quite important for my profession during the pandemic. Working from home has been driving me NUTS but I consider myself lucky too.
This shit has affected everyone I know psychologically. I guess people either overcompensate by posting all that “best version of me” shit on social media or just suppress it but you can tell by the physical signs.
Some “hard” men I know have suddenly started balding, as in really *balding". My dad started a couple of months ago. Brought my dad for a check up with my friend doc by saying it happened so fast we had to rule out any “vaccine side effects” just to make him go. Doc pulled me aside and told me that the roots are still intact so it’s “obviously stress related” but my dad’s not the kind of person to ever show emotion during times of adversity. Told him NOT to tell this to my dad or he’d do a De Niro in Analyze This on him LMAO.
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Sleep issues are getting worse but I’m also taking into account the fact that I need to be in front of fucking computer all day. Have had to engage more remote workers from other countries for IT projects so the time zones have fucked up my entire schedule. Lockdowns in these countries at different times fucked it up even more.
What the fuck is “daylight savings time” anyway? Shut up with the daylight savings. Even China stopped that shit back in the 90s. And how the fuck do people spend their lives coding and ENJOYING IT? You really gotta be wired in a certain way to be able to do that. Big props to these guys.
Emotionally, I don’t really know where I stand. I’ve been taught to suppress shit so much by my dad I don’t even know what I’m feeling other than guilt, which at least compels me to do more productive shit but it’s mostly irrational so it’s probably compensating for other things that I should be feeling, which can’t be good. Not sure how this will work out in the long run.
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This is generally my response when things go really sideways. Like a less fun version of “hold my beer and watch this”.
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I’ve had a hard time with the pandemic. I’ve gone months without working out at all for the first time since I can remember, twice now. Weight up, motivation way down. I have fears I didn’t have before…of scarcity, of political unrest…I now know that we could become an entirely different country overnight. We used to talk about “when it all goes down,” but it was a fun exercise in survivalism. Now I picture bread lines and lined faces with hollow eyes.
I think there are positive outcomes, too. I’m less inclined to take things for granted (stocked shelves at the store, job) and I’ve become a little less invested in appearances.
I struggle more with my work. It’s been harder listening to other people’s worries and miseries and health and family problems. Mostly it’s okay, but the days I wish I didn’t have to do it are definitely more frequent.
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Same, man.
My dad rarely works in the winter (he’s a mason/bricklayer). There just isn’t usually enough work to keep everyone going, at least fulltime. He was getting unemployment in Jan/Feb, like he normally does, but it’s like 1/3 of what he would actually earn so it’s still hardly enough to do anything with. Come March, and COVID, his boss brings everyone back to work for a week or two. Unemployment ends. Then he lays everyone off again. Somehow, for some reason, he didn’t do whatever was needed for his guys to get unemployment. Maybe he just didn’t actually lay them off. I think it was more like saying, “We’re just taking this one week off” but for 10 weeks in a row.
So there’s my dad, at home, not knowing when he’ll be able to work again, having just spent a couple months getting like $300 a week and now getting nothing, seeing college kids laid off from their serving jobs getting $600-$1,000 a week in unemployment. It’s not that he really cared what they were getting, but it’s kind of infuriating to be the adult with 5 kids, a house, an unreliable car, and being stuck in that situation.
Work goes okay over the summer, then on a Thursday in October he jumps off one level of scaffolding (probably 6-8 feet high?) for the 10,000th time at work, hears a pop, and thinks he broke his ankle. Goes to the hospital, gets an x-ray, they tell him he probably did break his ankle and put him in one of those boots things. He hobbles around for a few days, then the next Tuesday they call and say “Oh wait, it was your heel. You’re not supposed to put any weight on that foot, and you need emergency surgery.” Wtf? How do you wait 5 f*cking days to tell him what bone he broke, then say not to put ANY weight on the foot after he spent 5 days putting weight on the foot?
Gets the surgery, probably mid-October, still can barely f*cking walk. Every appointment he’d have with his doctor, the dude wouldn’t remember his name, his occupation, or which foot he’d had surgery on. He’d grab the foot, twist it to see how much ROM there was, and my dad would almost start crying from the pain. Doc would say it’s doing good. His worker’s comp lady showed up to an appointment (my dad didn’t know he could tell her that she couldn’t come in), 2-3 months after the surgery, heard the doctor say he shouldn’t work for 6 months post-surgery, the worker’s comp lady said “That’s between me and his employer.” Again, wtf? Why? Are you the medical professionals? Doc pretty much says “OK” and the next week, releases him to work again.
He has shooting pains in his heels, ankle, and up his leg. He gets random cramps so bad he’d be moaning in pain. His toes are numb, and he can’t stand up quickly, walk faster than a hobble, or move sideways. His leg is still so swollen he can barely fit it in a work boot. His boss told him to come back to work, and he just said “No. I can’t, I need more time to recover.” So no worker’s comp, no unemployment, because technically his doctor said he’s ready and his boss had offered work. So all that stimulus money just went towards replacing his new income of $0. My parents were looking to replace their 1, 15+ year old car, but had to pay the bills. And the car finally gave out last month.
He’s kinda back to work now. Goes home every day to collapse on his bed in pain for a couple hours before being recovered enough to go take a shower. And now the company is slow again so he hasn’t worked for 3 weeks. Went ahead and filed for unemployment and is awaiting an angry phone call from his boss who will be mad that he did, but when you tell guys there’s no work what else are they supposed to do?
Sorry all. @SkyzykS’s story made me mad (at his situation, not him) and my dad’s does too. Went off on a bit of a rant. I know “life is unfair” and entire countries are dealing with worse than this every day of their lives, but man, sometimes stuff just sucks.
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Our family skated through quite well financially. My job is secure and we have record billing in my division. I have a gym in my home and can be quite self-contained.
I feel like I should be doing better because by all objective metrics things are great. However, my motivation is at an all time low and I have been emotionally flat for months when I’m not just sad. We were recently discussing that all past pleasures, like good food, books and movies seem flat.
So @coyotegal don’t be hard on yourself. I haven’t had anything bad or even really challenging happen and I’m less shiny than I was two years ago.
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I definitely had it a lot better than most, especially financially but the pandemic really taught me that money is NOT the key to happiness.
- stuck at home w/ a stressed out mum (depressed and prone to anger) and a little bro who needed to apply to uni was a bit too much. Luckily he got into a good one
- couldn’t lift properly b/c of mum, which was really hard for me because it was the second time I got derailed on some pretty big goals
- I constantly feel like I could/can be more productive given how lucky I am/was
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Honestly, this is my experience as well. The business I own has never been more profitable as it became socially acceptable to do the work remotely without having to visit international clients on site thus massively reducing expenses.
I feel that during pandemic my entire family was in a transaction mode, just checking things off - worrying that the parents and in-laws won’t get Covid, that the kids aren’t coughing… Sure, we read books, trained, spent time in nature and so on but it mostly felt like a task that one has to do. In that aspect we were more fortunate that the vast majority of people. But it’s just one long, emotionally flat haze without distinct emotionally charged memories.
And I cannot really talk to anyone about this, because when I try to raise the issue with friends I usually I get a reply along the lines of “Mom died two days after Dad during the peak of the second wave and I begged the nurse to let me Facetime her one last time but she was already on a ventilator so I just saw a bunch of tubes for a brief few seconds”. Not much understanding for my supposed partial emotional numbness.
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That is relatable. I can tolerate a good bit of adversity as long as there are some brighter moments along the way.
But the past year & change, even without the real devastating stuff has had a dark pallor. Like even if nothing bad is happening right in this moment, we and pretty much everybody we know weren’t actually having much fun.
There were some nice but brief distractions, but right behind those were a whole slew of “did you hear about so&so?”.
I can’t complain about the pandemic. No one I know was ever really sick. I worked from home and got a 10% raise. My company picked up a ton of business. Yet I still came out worse fatter and lazier. Last July I almost had a freaking breakdown with all of the BLM riots and chaos. So many people suddenly openly just outright hating America and wanting to burn it down rather than fix it messed with me.
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Physically I’m bigger and stronger
Mentally… I’m broken lol
Had one family member overseas die, one contract long covid, a few others fell seriously ill. Now that vaccines are commonplace overseas I’m no longer particularly worried. I’m more pissed off about the fact there are people I’ll never see again who are dying due to Australia’s draconian rules on international travel that can’t really be constitutionally challenged because we have no human rights charter.
Me too, outside from getting covid end of year, It was actually better for me. Being in Texas, nothing was really closed besides the gyms for a few months. I was able to go for walks or bike rides in the morning, go to academy/walmart/sam’s daily, work from home, workout at home, and ate pretty damn clean. Since I had access to my fridge, I had no reason to snack.
For the people who lost their jobs, I was well aware of the hardship (I’ve been broke and poor before with little hope.) The government “plan” was BS. I’m like how can you tell people they can’t work but not stop the banks from requesting their money?
I’m also personally aware of several people scamming the help that was out there giving a reason for politicians to drag their feet with relief.
As another plus, my kids went damn near a full year without getting sick due to common sense rules being enforced.
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Mentally I watched businesses close. I watched politicians lie. I watched medical experts lie. I watched the president lie. I watched my friends turn on each other. Mentally it became more clear to me that everyday people are on their own. It became clear that the landscape will be different for my kids. The pandemic sped an already dying retail economy.
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This, I think, is a large part of my flatness. Both my daughters are early 20s and just starting out but the last year and a half has not only made establishing jobs more difficult but socializing more difficult. Things already seemed so fragmented in the job market and this has contributed even more. People mock millennials for being overly sensitive and weak. Honestly, I think things were much easier for me in the 80s looking to start a career.
Agree on all counts.
I feel like Joe Walsh: I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do. Blessed, but battered nonetheless. Zooming with college students doing therapy from their childhood bedrooms, no graduations (we did my daughter’s in my living room, still a big breech of the rules). A client with prostate cancer, whose SO had terminal cancer. He’d drive her to the big cancer center 3 hours away and then wait in the car in the dead of winter. No bathrooms, no place to go.
My husband furloughed (did he just retire?), which turned out fine, my son laid off…just endless worry.
And again, I consider all of us incredibly blessed.
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I believe that social media has played a roll in the feelings of emotional unrest.
On instagram (as noted above) people posting their best lives and the rest of us feeling like we’re falling short despite having all the tools to be equally awesome.
Also instagram and FB, increasing polarization of opinions and lack of empathy. I had a shocking wake up with family members. One of my aunts out west shared quite a bit of extreme right wing information. I assumed since she’s in her 80s that she was developing dementia. Good news, she isn’t. Bad news, she’s fallen down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Having this type of thing out there exacerbates the situation.
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Another problem you get with social media is entertainment, politics, pop culture, moronic comments are all right next to eachother. I can open twitter/instagram/whatever in the morning and see a funny meme, people debating politics, a burning oil rig, and last night’s football results. I geniunely believe that wild variance of content all day long is messing with people’s mental health. You are always switched onto worry mode on social media
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It would really be something if there was a relationship between the these feeds and people conflating different issues, which seems to happen more and more lately.
Like in a feed you have;
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Picture of Tom Brady
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A burning oil rig
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A crying baby.
Which results in one group subconsciously believing that Brady burns babies, and a conflicting group that loves the way burning babies handle the blitz.
They then collide on Facebook and reinforce each other’s own sides with likes.
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Wouldn’t happen, Tom loves kids.
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