Day two of the new normal

Woke up at 4am to drive to VT - not to quarantine from my guys, but because I was planning to anyway. I loaded the car and left with no one awake and no one much on the roads. It was a dark and rainy drive until just about halfway - the sunrise on my right and a full moon on my left - glorious!

Landed at the cabin in time to throw stuff in the fridge and do my work day: meetings, respond to email, meaningless crap mostly. I explained my lack of symptoms and the unfolding process to everyone, over and over, like a birth story or a death story or the story of his proposal, like getting COVID-19 is an exceptional life event. 

Discussed with my boss how this might be a huge victory for feminism. That the new normal requires operations to allow for everyone, including men, to experience the need to be out of the office for 2 weeks to 2 months, with no warning and no guarantees. Managing operations around parental leave will seem like a luxury after this - we may even become more humane about it.

I woke up very clear, recognizing that the day before I was more impaired than I had realized. By the time  I went to bed, I knew I was still missing some fairly important part of how I normally operate. I installed 6 pieces of wood, then went to bed and fell asleep like a dead person.

Day one of the new normal

This morning, I woke up really NOT wanting to do my day. But I was doing it anyway. Around the bad attitude, I had figured out how to manage the load - barely, but balanced precariously. Then I got the call - a positive test result.

I thought but I’ve been so careful! Why? How? I had a negative result yesterday!?

I’ve been saying for weeks that we need to contingency plan for this and we haven’t had time. Or made time. What to do when there are insufficient resources to be adequately prepared? This is where traditional leadership methods are woefully inadequate.

I haven’t got over feeling like a plague carrier. And overly responsible for both having caught it and possibly spread it.

It makes no sense to me that I can’t catch it if I am masked and stay six feet away in intervals of 15 minutes or less, but once I have it, I have to quarantine to make sure I don’t spread it. Wouldn’t I also not spread it masked and six feet away in intervals of 15 minutes or less? The illogic of it is bewildering to me. As is the ardent way in which the health care workers have explained it to me.

Anywho - to bed, I’ll most likely kill you the morning.