At 12:01 am this morning, seven Bay Area counties went into Shelter In Place. From now until April 7, you have to remain at home indoors unless going to get food, going for medical reasons (including care taking duties) or going to a designated essential job. Which, well, my employer may be essential but my role is at best \u201cthe guy behind the guy behind the guy\u201d, and we are doing everything 100% remote until made to do otherwise. Which seems to be working, as I have already been remote for almost two weeks at this point owing to trying to be sure I could have my corticosteroid injections on time.<\/p>\n
For a long time, when asked for my vision of what I would like life to be like, it was that whole small town where I could work 100% remote, walled off from the bullshit of Silicon Valley and the real world. Now, through no fault of my own, I\u2019m almost going to be test-driving that vision for a minimum of three weeks. Which is sort of a \u201ccareful what you ask for\u201d thing\u2026I don\u2019t know how much longer the closest purveyors of takeout food and sorta-groceries will continue to be open, and the restaurants further out that are doing curbside takeout pickup may not have that long to function without some kind of financial relief. I suspect there\u2019s a real chance this will trend less wish-fulfillment and more slow-motion apocalypse, but that\u2019s not a right-now problem.<\/p>\n
At least we\u2019re acting. It\u2019s difficult not to feel like this crisis interprets the Tr*mp Administration as damage and routes around it. California has been ahead of the curve on scaling down gatherings, and if putting the Bay on lockdown is going to bend the curve, then let\u2019s !-ing go. I\u2019ve got beer and snacks enough to last two or three days, in confidence that we\u2019ll still be able to go get groceries and the like. Which may be foolish, because it\u2019s who knows where this thing could go from here, but we have some canned goods and the usual earthquake supplies. Our 72-hour quake planning was sound, so now we just have to keep outrunning three days.<\/p>\n
So now we work remote, we Zoom and FaceTime with friends and family who need contact, we watch Ken Burns documentaries and brew coffee and wait for Sunday when it\u2019s probably going to be farmers\u2019 market time again, and we see what\u2019s doing tomorrow. And tomorrow. Win the day, keep going. That\u2019s where we are right now in 2020, which is honestly where we\u2019ve been all along.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 12:01 am this morning, seven Bay Area counties went into Shelter In Place. From now until April 7, you have to remain at home indoors unless going to get food, going for medical reasons (including care taking duties) or going to a designated essential job. Which, well, my employer may be essential but my … <\/p>\n