Here we are, a point no one ever expected one year ago when all of this started. So much has happened over the past year, while so much hasn’t happened as I spent twelve months effectively home full-time. A twelve-month period where many of us learned about the fragility of our routines, our social lives, our ability to plan and create schedules, and even our expectations about maintaining our lifestyles. There is no way that any of these learnings could have happened absent a pandemic, even if we recognized some of our daily patterns were unhealthy or not sustainable in the long-term. Rather than focusing on all the things that didn’t or couldn’t happen, I’m thinking about the revelations I had over the past year.
First, the assumption of freedom to go where you want, when you want and how you want is not guaranteed. Most notably, the idea that I could fly off to the UK, or other international destinations, to reconnect with friends or discover new people and places, whenever I had sufficient time off work and the financial means wasn’t possible (and probably isn’t for at least another year). When I returned to the US after my five years abroad, the thought that I’d continue to spend time outside the country at least a few times a year was comforting and buffered the disappointment of having to return before I intended. I recognized that my professional working time wouldn’t allow as much travel and exploration since getting outside of the US (especially from Chicago) involved a lot of flight time, but I at least expected that I could continue to get away from time to time. I had accepted the fact that international destinations weren’t always practical, unless I could find another professional role that allowed me to combine my love of global travel with my work. However, I expected that I would be able to explore the country as well as the western coast of Canada. Being in California, the Pacific Islands, Hawaii and even Alaska finally seemed practical and accessible. The multitude of National Parks on the West Coast were attractive when I set my goal in 2018 of seeing all the National Parks in the near future. So, moving to Northern California was a good thing, from the personal travel perspective.
Second, the social scene and ability to meet new people is more complicated and difficult than I ever expected. Before last year, I had read about Millennials struggling to make IRL friends. The culture of focusing more on social media than actual, real in-person connections were being discussed, and the impact on mental health explored. In crowded coffee shops, you could see people completely absorbed with their smart phones and laptops, but every once in a while, there would be some connections with those around them. Setting up regular visits to coffee shops or retail shops gave access to friendly conversations with baristas, shop clerks, or other regular clientele which could lead to new friendships. Over the last two plus years I noticed more interest in MeetUp and my Women Who Whisky clubs where there were greater opportunities to meet like-minded people. There was clearly a gradual shift towards gathering with others that shared your interests or learning something new. This was a positive shift, in my mind, since it meant you could meet new people even if you didn’t have the traditional routes of things like small children (where you meet people through the parents of their friends, school or activities that your kids do). Having moved many times in the past 12 years, I had developed a rather reliable way of meeting people. It not only included finding a new church but joining clubs or other affinity groups. While formulaic, it worked to help me get connected in Chicagoland, and I expected it would do the same in the East Bay.
During COVID, these avenues for meeting people were closed off – churches weren’t gathering in-person, so I couldn’t find a new church home. I ended up finding a worship space via the online services of the National Cathedral having decided not to pursue connecting to local churches that are meeting online. It just didn’t feel right to me to jump into a local church, even though I’m not usually shy about introducing myself to new people or a new church. I had people say that I should just do it, but my selection of a church is not based purely on geography and I didn’t feel like joining online services would give me an adequate sense of whether I wanted to join any particular church as a regular member. So, I got used to the priests at WNC and have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know them virtually. Someday, I think I’ll go and see them in person, maybe once we’re freer to travel without fear of getting sick. And, if I feel safe going into an enclosed space with strangers again, I’ll begin exploring the local church scene. Until then, I look forward to my Sunday morning breakfast services as an essential part of my expression of faith.
MeetUps, a reliable vehicle for meeting people in the past, were canceled for most of the year. When they were allowed to start up again with small numbers (based on county guidelines for meeting outside our homes), I felt concern about whether people would follow masking guidelines or physical distancing rules and this could mar the experience. I tried one hike with a group where half the people didn’t wear their masks during the hike. Since it was meant to be a group activity and I had never been on that particular trail, I felt compelled to stay with the group. The fact that we were so close together made me uncomfortable given the number of those not wearing masks, and I didn’t go back. Even though I met some really nice people and felt that we could develop more of a friendship in the future, the pandemic overhanging left me overly cautious and unwilling to pursue more opportunities to get together. I peruse the App from time to time for group activities but have continued to avoid any in-person meetings. Given that online events aren’t as conducive to actually talking to anyone, those just don’t appeal as much as they did initially during the shelter in place. So, the question of how to meet people locally continues to elude me.
I’ve done a handful of online events for things like wine tastings and even some classes, but the disjointed conversation and fact that only one person can talk at a time made it feel awkward and difficult. You can’t have a free-flow conversation and I found myself feeling as though I was watching a conversation rather than actually participating in it. Of course, opening 6 bottles of wine to do an online tasting on my own presents its own challenges (how not to waste 6 bottles of wine, or get really sick drinking all that wine in one go by myself – lol). On the positive side, there were several happy hours and book club type meetings with friends from the past. I was able to reconnect with people I haven’t seen since high school or college, even though they lived in different states. Family calls every Sunday afternoon became a highlight of the week, and we’ve spent more time together (virtually) than we have over the past 20-odd years. So, while Zoom hasn’t been all good, it’s not all bad either. Video conferencing has actually helped make this whole year less isolating than it could have been absent the technology. Whether it’s Zoom, Webex, FaceTime, House Party or the other myriad video technologies, they have allowed me to keep in touch, effectively work from home and feel less cut off from people in general.
I am very fortunate to have a few friends from Minnesota that have also migrated to the Northern California area. While I haven’t met anyone in my city, I can have the small get togethers within my little bubble. As with everything else, these aren’t the usual kinds of social activities that we would be doing in a pre-pandemic world, but they are fun and usually involve good food and free-flowing drink. Preparing meals together or ordering take away from restaurants has replaced attending live concerts or theater performances and eating dinner at a fancy restaurant. Watching movies on Prime as we chat about the old days and growing up in St. Paul is relaxing and adds a bit of variety to just watching shows on your own. As the restrictions are easing, it’s becoming easier to do things like visiting restaurants (outdoors only). For both Christmas and my birthday, I had a very small dinner party that allowed me to indulge in my love of cooking for others as well as just having time with people IRL. Simple things, but having the ability to look forward to seeing real people outside of video calls makes a huge amount of difference.
Another key learning is the impact of climate change and how it is exasperated by a pandemic. Fire Season is a thing in California these days, and even though the locals say it was unusually bad and long this year, I don’t believe them. It appears to be getting longer and worse every year. A pattern that repeats over several years is not an unusual situation, it’s actually a new climate pattern. Toxic air, due to fires and then overall pollution meant that I couldn’t go outside for a few months. Of course, I escaped to Minnesota for a few weeks, but the reality was that shelter in place evolved into solitary confinement due to the terrible air quality. This situation, combined with a growing realization that I couldn’t really exercise indoors since gyms were shut for all but a week or two in the past year, led me to consider creating my own home-gym. I had never really considered doing this before. The apartments I’ve lived in for the past two plus years have had on-site gyms, and even before then, I used hotel gyms or local gyms near to where I was staying if the weather or other conditions prevented me from running outside. As I considered the fact that working out in a confined space with other people who are sweating and breathing heavily was distasteful and potentially dangerous, getting my own equipment became more of an imperative. In the end, I broke down and joined the cult of Peloton, buying one of their bike packages for my birthday. My preferred exercise is still running, but space constraints mean that indoors, I’ll be on the bike – at least I’ve been forced into cross training and maybe this will help deal with a recurring knee injury that flares up when I increase my running mileage. My county is discussing re-opening indoor gyms again soon, but I won’t be going back. And now I have an alternative to exercising when the air is toxic.
The rapid development and deployment of a vaccine (or several) is a testament to scientific development and understanding of viruses. This is good on many fronts as it could lead to other cures for diseases that have not been addressed. For example, could this finally mean a vaccination against AIDS? While there was official resistance from the previous President, the world’s scientific community did come together and translated key learnings from other corona viruses to put forth a method of battling COVID-19. The distribution of vaccines has been slow and difficult but given the complete lack of support and coordination at the national level (until recently), it’s not surprising that it hasn’t gone smoothly. There is still hope that we’ll have better distribution by early summer, though I do wonder whether there will be enough up-take to actually make it effective. Unfortunately, the anti-vaccers and others who are skeptical of the science may lead us to a much longer term of waiting for a return to a less restrictive environment since we probably won’t see herd immunity for at least another year or more.
In addition to the personal impacts, professionally I’ve returned to using skills and experiences from nearly 25 years ago. As a part of my first professional level HR job at Quaker Oats, I was tasked with managing health and safety. The company had decided that OSHA compliance best resided within HR since we were well used to managing overall compliance efforts and statutory regulations. I had to get certified through a tedious course in OSHA 500 (don’t ask), and at both Quaker Oats and NEBS, I ended up managing the health and safety space. It was all very interesting, and I learned a lot about machine guarding, lock-out/tag-out, managing noise, etc. As I progressed professionally and took on more of a corporate role, I left behind the hands-on management of OSHA compliance. It never occurred to me that I’d have an opportunity to do it again. Yet, this year proved otherwise. As a part of the task force for reopening our offices to more than just essential workers and dealing with a state level OSHA program, I found myself being sucked back into health and safety. Unfortunately, for many of my colleagues, they have been in industries where OSHA isn’t really a frequent consideration. Office-based jobs don’t really lend themselves to OSHA regulations, beyond just filing routine reports on work related injuries and illnesses. Now, we had to deal with very stringent COVID related mandates from CalOSHA. The team had no experience in these matters, and while it isn’t my role, strictly speaking, I felt the need to step in and guide the response. Writing response plans and policies came to me since I know what OSHA expects and how these things must be constructed to ‘prove’ that the company is complying with the requirements. So interesting to resurrect those things that I used to do at the start of my career. I feel fortunate that I know what to do, and can contribute, when my ‘real’ job (what I was hired to do) is still relatively slow due to COVID.
In all of this, the old ‘wash your hands’ and ‘stay home when you’re sick’ have elevated to a point where I don’t see this going away anytime soon. While seeing people wearing masks in Asia or while traveling in the pre-pandemic world seemed odd, I suspect that it will be the norm going forward. Gone are the days that people just turn up at the office when they’re sick, and hopefully, gone are the cycles of the back-to-school illnesses that used to go around parents of young children (and their co-workers who were also subjected to viruses that kids picked up and spread). Instead of being classified as a germaphobe for obsessively using hand sanitizer and wearing face masks in crowds, this will just be what people do to prevent getting sick. This will be a good thing, though my hope is that we do get to a point where masks aren’t necessary all the time. Being able to see people’s facial expressions, or even to just smile at someone on the street goes a long way towards restoring social interactions and building community. Not to mention that ability to hug or kiss in greeting (like in Europe). Physical contact with others is something that I hope to see again one day, though it still seems far off at this point in time.
So, the one-year anniversary of the shutdown has come and I am anxiously awaiting my turn for the vaccination. This year won’t be a complete return to the pre-pandemic world, and that is a good thing in many ways. However, I do see the turning point and am cautiously optimistic that by 2022, I might be able to dust off my passport and ‘get out of Dodge’ for a long overdue visit to Europe, or maybe even beyond.
