How are you coping with COVID (and other 2020 fun)?

[Sunny]

There's been a LOT, this last year, and the end isn't in sight. There's a literal crapton of stuff that qualifies in the () above, so this isn't just about tips for quarantine. My answer is basically 'very poorly', but I'm sure this group has some great ideas.

Please have some great ideas.

[Misadventure]

Coping methods etc?

All day fires, making sure to watch shows and movies together, reading both social issue and classic books to discuss, playing video games together, look at images from around the world in a Facebook group called what I see from my front window, cook longer prep meals, spend time helping people destress over possible infections.

We isolate as strongly as we can to protect my wife's patients, so no contact save her coworkers.

[Seraphim73]

Spending time on relatively-brainless computer games (WoW for my wife, CK3 for me), while sharing time watching TV shows we've already seen that show a better world than the one we have (The West Wing, Madame Secretary, etc). Trying to be okay cutting down my RP time because it requires creative energy and I just do not have that right now. Focusing on safety in public commitments, and focusing on the numbers/data for making public decisions.

[Derp]

@seraphim73 said in How are you coping with COVID (and other 2020 fun)?:

The West Wing, Madame Secretary

I need to finish MS and re-binge the West Wing.

Also check out the Newsroom if you haven't!

[Darren]

NGL, Covid hasn't had much of an impact on me at all.

Sure I was furloughed back in April but with the extra $600 a week I was getting with my unemployment, and the $1200 payout by the feds, I made out like a bandit. It was basically a 3 month paid vacation. So what if I squandered most of the money on a top of the line gaming laptop...

The only real problems for me have been having to wear a ^%#&# mask everywhere and the stores being out of stuff (tp, paper towels, beef, SPAM, etc. How the hell do you run out of SPAM??). The being stuck at home part is a non-issue for me as I pretty much only work and go home anyway.

I spent a lot of time on Twitch, Youtube, Hulu and hacking on my Evennia game. I also dug out a few boxed sets (Xena, Hercules, The Nanny, Babylon 5, ST:Voyager...). I also slept. A lot.

[Grayson]

Covid's impact on me has mostly been that I don't have to drag myself onto public transport for three hours (or more) a day. I never went anywhere or did anything anyway. I haven't had the number of trips out that I usually get via work either, but I've still been working - it's just that the commute went from 90 minutes to 9 steps. I got used to this life when I was living in the arse end of nowhere, too, so it's just back to what I already know how to do, with added purpose.

I did get a string of multicoloured Christmas lights, though, and some tinsel. The lights are behind my monitor where they're not directly in my face, lighting up the wall in red and blue and green and yellow, and they keep making me smile. I think those are going to stay.

[Auspice]

Covid has impacted me a lot more than I'd like.

I'm normally kind of hermit-y, but...

***=I ended up realizing this became less about coping methods and more a rant about how much I've struggled***

click to show

As an example:
Last week, from Monday evening to Sunday afternoon, I didn't speak to another person except the nurse when I got a flu shot. For nearly six days, I didn't speak aloud to another person in any meaningful way.

Pre-Covid, at least I was working and interacted with people at my job. I'd take myself out at least once every other week so that I wasn't trapped in the cycle of work/home. I did have a social circle (though the reasons for losing it are unrelated to covid and entirely related to my refusal to be around people who condoned transphobia).

On top of that, my last job contract ended right before covid hit and the new job I had lined up withdrew their offer. So I've spent ten months out of work. And I was doing all right with the federal unemployment bonus... then that went away and I limped along for a few months. And then the extended unemployment went away for a couple weeks. Some very wonderful people have sent me money ( to them) to help out and I'm rolled over onto more unemployment, but I'm still looking at a bank account well in the negatives (guess who forgot she had a car payment scheduled - THIS GAL) until it pays out sometime this week.

I keep telling myself it could be worse. I tell myself that over and over. I got covid. It was rough. But I didn't end up in the hospital. No one close to me has died of it (though people-close-to-people-close-to-me have). I still have a home. I haven't fallen behind too far on any of my bills.

But that hasn't stopped me from pretty much just sleeping and playing video games and wanting to bury my head under a rock until I can start the new job.

Which, y'know, that's what really sucks? Like, I have a new job! I should be more excited! But the past year has been so goddamn crushing that it's hard to be excited about it.

so anyway
uh
I cope by sleeping way more than I should and playing video games

[Macha]

I do a lot of work/home cycle, when the world is 'normal'. (thanks chronic pain!) When the shutdown started, they wouldn't lay me off, they kept me sitting around, able to do nothing. (I really wanted the layoff. Sleep in, collect the extra u/e, etc) Finally they did lay me off for like a week.

They eventually got me situated, and then the company hired me from the staffing agency at the end of June.

I've been playing a lot of video games. My friends and I do movie nights on Discord, to try and keep socializing.

But I sleep a LOT, and have been watching a lot of Netflix and Food Network. - But not the holiday shows. Just the competitive ones. Chopped, Guy's Grocery Games, Beat Bobby Flay.

[Misadventure]

I think Netflix or one of the services offers a thing where you watch a show with another household, and both of you can pause it etc, and you can then link up by whatever means to talk as desired.

[Auspice]

@misadventure said in How are you coping with COVID (and other 2020 fun)?:

I think Netflix or one of the services offers a thing where you watch a show with another household, and both of you can pause it etc, and you can then link up by whatever means to talk as desired.

Amazon Prime and Hulu both offer this. Netflix does not as of yet.

[popes]

There's not much to cope. I live in a shitty state with a shitty governor who never closed anything, and even if she did, by dint of gigantic technicality, my work is deemed essential. (I work in utility safety. Because utilities are essential, and my job is to certify their gear, ergo I am essential.)

I mean, at least I still have my job and can pay my bills. I do miss my LARPs and meeting for tabletop bullshit in person. Zoom isn't the same.

[Snackness]

After a long day of trying to be productive in my career and also trying to teach first grade to a first grader (after having made a conscious decision earlier in life to never ever be a teacher) and also trying to be a passable mom to said first grader, I:

Knit a lot
Listen to podcasts a lot

Sadly, RP has become a chore.

[Tori]

I've worked through this whole thing - who knew country club accountants were essential? Oh right, they aren't, but if I got pulled over I was told to lie. ANYhow.

I decluttered the ever living eff out of my house. Almost manic level. So much yard work. I replaced a fence outside even. Lots of tv/movies/video games. I thought rp would be a great 'escape' option, but I don't seem to have the will or energy. I may start walking again. It's a weird balance of KEEP MOVING with bouts of sloth I guess.

[Kanye Qwest]

Yeah it's weird how RP seems like a lot of..work, right now? Almost anything I have to focus on mentally does. I haven't really been watching new shows or movies, even, because the idea of sitting still and actually paying attention to something for an hour feels exhausting.

[SilentHills]

I dropped this semester and started working more. Probably a shitty idea.

Lately I've been buying Christmas gifts for myself, since I have to be out with the public this means that I want to look nice but I want to do it for myself and have my own style. So this means enamel pins to wear on my uniform and barrettes.

Also, more art type stuff for my walls to brighten my environment.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I have picked up very few positive habits but I am reading more. I'm working my way through my 'books I bought with the best intentions but haven't read' pile on my bookshelf at a decent clip.

[silverfox]

I haven't coped very well. I cycle between being okay and being depressed petty card core. I've found I have very little left in 'reserve'. It takes almost nothing to shake me and as a teacher that means I spend a lot of time shaken.

[GreenFlashlight]

Endure. That's all I can think of to do. I keep working because I'm "essential" (but not essential enough to be paid a living wage, which makes me want to burn the "heroes work here" signs in front of the building) and I stay away from my family to keep them safe. I watch myself grow angrier and watch my social skills atrophy, both with dismay but with no idea of how to prevent or reverse either. I just keep reminding myself I'm okay, I'm not great but I'm okay, I can get through this, just five more months to go until I probably have a vaccine and the people I want to visit probably have a vaccine...

In the meantime, I sleep a lot.

[insomniac7809]

I work in mall retail. It's pretty much a combination of anxiety that I have to work with the public weighted against anxiety that I won't have work if we go back into lockdown or the store closes.

I've also done so much less than I keep thinking I will with the free time I've wound up with. I haven't even gotten into things I really want to do. It's brought out the worst of my "oh, I won't put on a movie because I'm going to Productive, I'll just do this ten-minute distraction first." Do you know how much time you can sink into a series of ten-minute distractions on the internet?

So yeah, uh, I guess the answer would be "badly."

[Ganymede]

I'm a lawyer. We're supposed to be essential. But not all of us have to deal with criminal stuff.

I'm a parent. Having to juggle my work life with teaching the kids at home has been challenging. But I can work from home, so that makes life far easier than for others who can't. Plus, I actually have a teaching degree.

I keep busy. I got the COVID, but I recovered. I have a pair of kittens to deal with. I just finished wrapping gifts. I suppose life is easier for us 'burbans.

I wish I had something pithy to say, but I don't.

Please endure.