Assume that the government is paying your necessary bills, personally and for any business you own; in addition, assume that you can WFH if your job supports it. Assume “typical” rules: no nonessential travel, stay within walking distance of your home for going outside, essential businesses only.
Do you think you could stay this way for months? How many? Does it depend on when you’re given an end date? What if your leaders refused to give you an end date, saying hey, we’re paying your bills, there’s nothing else you need, we’re staying closed until a vaccine is found?
My life hasn’t changed much. My daughters don’t spend the weekend anymore, we just go on socially distanced walks together and they can’t come in the house, but other than that it really isn’t very different. I never went anywhere I didn’t have to then and now I have orders not to. I was doing fine and I’m still doing fine.
That’s an easy one. Even now I still have to go out on occasion for work. But if it was up to me I could stay home for years on end and be happy. As far as I can tell staying home has always been my preference. Apparently when I was 3 or 4 years old and the topic of a family vacation came up, I reportedly said, “I’ll go as long as we get to take the house with us.” Even now I find that the most stressful times in my life have been the week or two leading up to a vacation.
There is nowhere to buy groceries within walking distance of my house other than a few gas station mini-marts, so … not very long. If we’re allowed to drive to a supermarket once a week, I guess I COULD do it indefinitely, but not happily, and by November I think I would be willing to vote for just about anybody who promised to introduce a bit more nuance.
I have a work-from-home job, so I could stay locked down indefinitely. But my girlfriend resides in another state, so I’d like to see her every now and then.
The hardest thing about lockdown is I can’t get away from my kids. Being with a 4 year old and a 1 year old 24/7 is terrible and it will get worse in a week when school ends and the 30 min a day we get with someone else entertaining them goes away. Initially, school was annoying because it was one more thing we had to do, now its a moment when we can off load them. After a month without school we’ll be praying for COVID.
Years. Working from home has been nice, as is the generally less-crowded conditions for essential business. I suspect the business I work for will go along with Google and Facebook in that they’ll allow working from home until the end of the year at least, and I plan on taking them up on that offer.
A vacation eventually would be nice, but I can deal without that for a long while. There’s reasonable nearby facilities for getting some outdoorsness.
If I knew it would be years, I’d probably look at upgrading some equipment at home; maybe making a proper home office, and upgrading my garage with certain equipment.
Presuming that we’re talking about the kind of “lockdown” we’ve got now, in which driving to the grocery etc. occasionally is permissible: pretty much indefinitely, as long as I’ve got the cats.
There are currently four cats, and three of them are less than eight years old, so that should be quite a while; even presuming that nobody else imitates the current youngest cat, and just shows up meowing at my door.
It helps a great deal that in my case “home” is 80 acres.
– in practice, I’m going to have to start selling at farmers’ markets in about a month.
After just 3 months I’ve already cracked. I’ve started diving again, and visiting my parents. I do both of those things as safely as possible. I have a consistent dive buddy and we maintain social distance on the surface; no carpooling or going out on boats. When I visit my folks, I come around to the backyard and sit 10 feet away, not touching anything they’re going to touch. I realize this still puts us all at greater risk than if we didn’t do these things. But we all apparently suck at making sacrifices for the greater good.
I don’t know how long I can last without seeing my other friends and family members, or hugging anyone besides my husband. It makes me sad to think of all the travel I won’t be able to do, all the concerts and baseball games I won’t be able to go to, and just the lack of coffee shops and bars and other places I could go to be alone in a crowd. I know so many people have it so much worse, and it’s petty of me to complain. But I miss my old life something fierce.
Except for not being able to find everything I want at Kroger and having to go to greater lengths to sanitize my environment and having to go to greater lengths to obtain sanitizing agents…my life hasn’t really changed much. I’m an employee of a supplier to an essential industry. I go to work everyday, same as before. If I was suddenly unemployed and had the problems I’ve read about other people having getting unemployment…my world would quickly turn to shit. If the virus suddenly goes crazy and everything shuts down I have enough food to last a couple months at bare subsistence level. If I get the virus, fuck it all.
At this kind of lockdown where I can still go to the grocery and liquor store and hardware store and continue to work from home, pretty much indefinitely. My Wife and I already have a remote lifestyle. Two acres that backs up to national forest. We don’t frequent bars or restaurants that often. Was maybe once or twice a month. So no great loss for us.
We have two neighbors down the road that we like, and have seen them twice since lock down. We get along great.
The dogs are getting more walks, since it’s easier to do it in the middle of the day on ‘lunch’ break. We are interrupting their day long naps so it’s good for them. Good for me too.
Had 2600 IM’s on Slack from coworkers last week so I’m not a complete hermit.
The internet at home sucks for remoting into work, and won’t improve anytime soon, but I’m making it work.
I just don’t drive to work, and set my own hours. I could keep this up for ever.
Since I already work at home, the major difference is that my husband is here 24/7 as well. That’s fine with me. The only places we ever go is shopping for food and other necessities. I’ve canceled all my doctors’ appointments, but it’s getting to the point where I have to see a few of them. Not looking forward to entering any medical facility.
But I do miss going to concerts. I recently got mail from the Cleveland Orchestra, for next season. Do they really think it’ll be safe by September?
And my Gay Men’s Chorus? When will that be safe, for the chorus members and the audience?
With my age and health issues, if I get this virus I’m a dead man. So the longer I’m quarantined, the safer I am.
