Social distancing / quarantine support thread

[Fraze]

The world is scary right now. We're facing a situation that hasn't existed in living memory - a pandemic reaching nearly everywhere in the world. Most of us are isolated in our homes, waiting it out for an indeterminate time.

But, we have something that didn't exist for any previous pandemic of this scale - the internet. Even as we're shut in our homes, anxious and restless, we can reach out and connect with millions, even billions of people in similar situations.

The NTWF has always been a solid, steady source of support for its members. Even though we're scattered around the world, we're all in the same boat together. Let's be here for each other in this time.

Here you can vent, share cool or funny things, and trade strategies for getting through this time. If you have any resources (websites, books, lifehacks, blogs - anything) that have helped you either privately or professionally, put them here! Maybe they will help someone else. I'll try to keep a list updated on this post.



For me personally, all the schools throughout Estonia officially closed their doors last Monday, but the teachers are still teaching and students are still learning. I'm really proud of the nation's teachers, students, and parents for coming together and adapting - it's been incredible how well and how quickly everyone has adjusted.

Hunty already works from home, and while kindergartens are technically still open (they're the only schools still operating), parents have all been urged to keep their smols home if at all possible. The result being that, even though it's technically open, Traveler's kindergarten is completely empty. So Hunty and I are finding a balance with trading Traveler back and forth on an hourly basis, then both of us working while he naps. There's also a lot of sticking him in front of the TV, but... eh. It's a tried-and-true parenting technique, and at least he likes edutainment shows. (Paw Patrol foreeeeeveeeeer.)

I ended up making a Discord chat for my students (since it's a platform that many of them are already familiar with), and so far it's been a pretty good way to teach. I've managed to do a few lessons over voice chat and more Q&A rounds over text chat. I also found a pretty cool (and free!) website that you can use to make a multi-user whiteboard: Web Whiteboard It's got pretty limited functions - you can draw (using the mouse) and you can make text, and that's about it. But it's proven to be pretty useful, and gives students another way to interact with the lesson. (Even if they mostly use it for doodles, but, well, just as long as they don't draw over what I'm writing.)

Food has been a challenge, because the whole point of a quarantine is that you don't go pop off to the store to get three apples and a box of chicken thighs because those are the two things you need right now. Some Estonian stores do deliveries, but wouldn't you know it, there's a weeklong waiting time. Meaning we've had to learn to plan effectively two weeks in advance - order a week's worth of food that won't be delivered until next week, while still not completely neglecting what we have to eat right now. And for the most part, it's... gone pretty well? Like we keep getting caught unawares with basic things and somehow we now have NO FRUIT despite just getting a delivery (one-week-ago-us must have had a serious lapse in brain), but somehow food keeps happening.

I think the same can be said of life right now. There will be shortages, and we'll probably plan some things poorly. But ultimately the best thing we can all do here is live day-to-day. Well, that, and also remember:

SPOILER: Click to show

Resource list:
Web Whiteboard: Make free multi-user whiteboards!

[Thorn]

This is such a great thread idea! Thanks Fraze! <3

Our four-week-lockdown doesn't start until tomorrow night, so I don't yet know how I'll get through it (I'm not working from home, and not studying, so no structure at all), but I have some plans. I bought 'Explorers of Darkness' recently so will play a bunch of that, and 'Skyrim' too. I'm going to make an effort to get up at the same time each day and have a consistent morning and evening routine. Have plans for Skype coffee dates with close friends! And I'll try to get back into writing more, since I haven't been doing so much of that recently and splitting Creative Time between writing and D&D will give me more variety and less boredom than just purely doing the latter.

[Celestial]

I love this thread so much!

In the UK, we're in full lockdown as of yesterday evening, but life has been disrupted since last week. My classes have moved online (we have a Microsoft Teams, and tutors have sent out an email detailing how stuff is going to go) and thankfully, my degree is all coursework. The only qualm I have with that is I have trouble reading stuff online for research, so I am worried about the massive amount of research I must do for my dissertation. However, that will be a worry in June, by which point hopefully things have eased. A lot of the students here have returned home. My exhibition, which opened on the Friday before crap hit the fan, is closed indefinitely and right now, we don't know if it will reopen. But we got to have an opening at least, unlike the other half of the class.

Mum is working from home. Dormouse's dad is home with us. Dormouse is off nursery, since it's shut. It feels like Christmas.

For me, the biggest challenge has been managing my anxiety. I've ranted about it extensively here but the uncertainly is getting to me. It also bothers me that all my plans for gaining volunteering and experience have been thrown out. I've had to block all news sources and social media in order to not compulsively check it and manage it. Other than that, we're fine. We're all massive homebodys, we live in the middle of nowhere, and my mum's Soviet sense served her well in that we are fully stocked in terms of food and supplies because she bought stuff before the panic began. But I have my coursework, arts, writings, I bought video games with my Ryanair refund...I'm not going to get bored, that's for sure.

[Ian Wolf-Park]

My workplace is being shut down for two weeks by local government decree as of tomorrow due to it being non essential. As of now, I have no idea what I will be doing with the time off.

[Liou]

Been locked down for over a week, with the stress of patrols and authorisations for outings and where to get my groceries. I did have a bit of a deep reserve for non-perishables but my diet really depends on fresh produce. And I've got no car.
Not too worried about keeping my job for the moment as my employers are especially decent people.

Time off is fine so far, yoga teacher has livestreamed some classes before going offline to be a hermit for a while, and she left the videos on her FB for those who want to do them again -
I hear that lots of fitness coach and teacher people are streaming free classes even for people who're not subscribed to them, check that out, try new things maybe.
I've got my own playlist of workout songs to let off steam.
I've been getting plenty of little things done from my backlog of internet things to read and comment on, files to sort through, there's seriously a huge lot of things I've saved to Read Later.

I've got no one around to talk to, though - if I email RL people I won't have anything to talk about that's not stressful RL things.
*barnacle-clings to NTWF* So I really depend on friends being online here.

[Celestial]

I went out today for my once a day government allowed excercise. Went all the way across town and back again.

It is not quite deserted but definitely almost empty. There's barely any cars or people. Most people are avoiding each other. Everything except the supermarkets and that one overpriced hippie health food shop is shut. Although the booze shop I am a regular at does delivery, so that's nice.

I did make the mistake of going into my university building. Actually, it is supposed to be locked completely but my card still worked so I thought why not? I needed to have a look at something anyway. The postgrad room is...well, unsurprisingly, it is completely empty, but everything is still there as though everyone's just stepped out for a bit. Seeing all that, seeing this bit of faded normality, made me suddenly miss my classmates and teaching. I had a minor breakdown after that.

The moral of the story is don't leave your house. House is safe. House does not feel any different.

[Gelquie]

It's been gradually building up here. But aside from being worried for other people, I've mostly been trying to figure out what to do with myself.

Unfortunately, I was also kind of shut in during February because of a wave of depression. And then through all of early March, I had a broken computer to contend with and mentally scream at. And by the time I accepted the situation and went "I'll just go to my workplace and work there to take a break from computer repair while doing research," bam.

I also have a bit of SAD, and around mid-March, I noticed the sun coming back and my mood brightening. And it was a nice day out that day, so I thought I'd take advantage of it, maybe go to the store and run some errands before the virus hits here.
My timing was impeccable. It was the day the quarantine was called. And the day before the first case was found in my area. Which meant it had been here a couple weeks already. Woops.
(Stores are still crowded, but not as much as they were that day. And the second time I went out during this time, I made sure to go during a snowstorm specifically to minimize crowds.)

So right after I finally get the mental gumption to take care of myself and enjoy the season, this pandemic forces me back inside. Yay. Not much I can do about it, though.

Again, broken laptop, so I've been spending most of my time at home doing not that much, because it's pretty infeasible to work with a phone. My family has sent me a loaner laptop (that was infused with malware because of course), which I'm using now, and hoping to repair my other one now that I have another laptop to work with, but I can at least get back to work.
Right now, my mental focus is towards figuring out how to organize my house. If I work exactly where I do all my recreational time, I won't be in the mental space for it. So I have an idea to move my desk around as needed, but I need to reorganize my living room and think about it before I can do that. It needed munging out anyway, but I'm generally not good at figuring these things out anyway.

So basically, I'm forced into spring cleaning and figuring out a work from home routine.

Minor issue by comparison, though, and not one I'm really complaining about. I'm just happy to be able to work and do things again. Well, mostly, but it's way better than before. And my department is setting up meetings via internet to keep the department in touch, which I think is nice. I like my colleagues, and I probably won't get to see them for a while, but at least there's that.

I also live alone, which is a double-edged sword. I live alone, so yay, I don't have to infect anyone or have anyone infect me. But oh no, I live alone, isolation, and also, if I do get struck bad with it and am in no state to do much, then I'm kinda screwed.
Internet and phone helps a lot, but it's just not the same as IRL activities sometimes.

Anyway, probably gonna take up crochet too. I was binge-watching TV shows, but I could never do that for long anyway and I'm kinda burned out on it now.

I wonder how long it'll go on. I have my guesses. But maybe it's better to take it as it comes. There's enough stress about all of this, and no one is distant from the situation to provide outside perspective. The way I'm taking it now is to try to balance letting there be room for people to talk about this, and allowing for plenty of distractions. Because both are needed. Just to what quantities?

[Huntress]

I've been working from home for the past... what, eight years? So on the one hand not a whole lot has changed for my daily routine. But then again my mental health has also always leaned on... well, not even necessarily travels and new experiences and whatnot, but the promise thereof. Having something to look forward to, the option to plan a trip or outing or somesuch.

If nothing else, this whole situation has made me take a good look at my own psyche. I can happily handle being in my own home, puttering away with the cleaning and the drawing and the reading (our central library released all available ebooks for free so I now have a big pile of cushy crime novels - shame they're not e-reader compatible). Mom sent us tomato and basil seeds so one of these days I'll start building an herb garden on the balcony when I get a moment. Gotta finally start with pregnancy yoga, because I kept telling myself I'd start going sometime after week 16 (ahaha) and never got around to it before everything closed, but youtube is chock full of instructions and I really have no excuse.
...only thing is that I think in my case, being able to stay home and find happiness here has always been something I cope with well, rather than something I naturally gravitate towards. I still need people around me, just in that introvert-cat sort of way.

You know, once upon a time when the world was still young and innocent (like, a few years ago now), I bounced around this idea of starting a Wine and Whine club thread on the forum. Like, people who want to hang out with a friend will usually drop a line to the effect of "hey, wanna go grab a bite at a café?" and then they'll agree on a time, meet up and drink and chat and whatnot. There's really no reason why we the internetpeople couldn't do the same. Agree with someone to get together, find out a time that works for both (or everyone involved), agree on platform (skype? duo? discord? messenger?), maybe prepare a bite to eat or something to drink, and then just meet up at the agreed time like you would with RL people. Have a chat, catch up, complain about life, whatever works. I think the fact that we seem so permanently available on the internet is exactly what keeps us from taking designated time like this, but personally I could really use something like that, doubly so these days.
(For the record, I didn't drink wine even before the pregnancy, I'm allergic to it Coffee and Awkward Ramble just wouldn't be as catchy.)

[Gelquie]

I think a sort of Cafe Chat is a fun idea! I'm totally up for that, if enough people are up for it, and we can agree to a platform. ^^
(I really like those chats IRL, I just don't get to do them often. xD )

I also had a sort of idea. I remember there are sites that allow people to watch Youtube videos together. And these often created watch parties or QUALITY movie time. Maybe during this time, if people are interested and have ideas of what to watch, we could do more of those?
We could always watch random videos, but there are some cool videos and web series out there that could be fun to watch with people.

[Huntress]

Mar 24, 2020 16:11:26 GMT -5 Gelquie said:

I think a sort of Cafe Chat is a fun idea! I'm totally up for that, if enough people are up for it, and we can agree to a platform. ^^
(I really like those chats IRL, I just don't get to do them often. xD )

See, I wasn't even thinking mass chats. I was thinking more like, Forumer Alice is feeling all isolated and posts saying "hey, I could use some good old-fashioned human interaction right now", Forumer Bob sees this and currently has the time, so replies saying "I'll make tea and call on Duo in half an hour", details get hashed out, Alice and Bob go have a chat. Or Alice and Bob agree on a virtual cafe gettogether for next Wednesday just for funsies. Or Alice and Bob and John and Jacob and Jingleheimer all get together for a mass chat on Skype. Basically, take your pick of combinations and plans. (Obviously it'd be smart of everyone involved to already be in contact off-forum on their platforms of choice and all the usual caveats about chatting with internetpeople apply, etc etc; I never fleshed the original idea out very much so I'm still spitballing on the go.)

Which sounds strangely obvious, and yet Fraze and I somehow managed to build an entire relationship with marriages and babies and the whole nine yards onto MSN chats that only ever happened whenever we both so happened to come online. As in, never really prioritizing and planning our chats over whatever else was going on the way you'd prioritize and plan RL gettogethers (or dates, even). On one hand the internet is always there, on the other hand that makes it hard to lean on it when you actually specifically need it, and we're all barreling headfirst into a time of potentially needing a lot of leaning.

Youtube watch parties are pretty much in the same vein of logic and I'd very much be up for that :3 I'm usually not much of a youtube watcher (wat is free time) but every now and again I fall down the rabbit hole of fascinating history videos and suchlike.

[Celestial]

I would definitely love a chat and get together over the interwebs sort of thing. ^^ I do live with the fam, so I can't do too late or too much (and you have to get used to the occassional interruptions by a smol, because my room is just so full of interesting stuff) but it would be a lot of fun for sure! Youtube videos, just chat, play games together, whatever.

[June Scarlet]

Ginz ❤ recommended a software called drawpile in this thread here a while back: ntwriters.proboards.com/post/2721260/thread

Might be a fun place to connect as well. I tried it out with PFA one time, it works, there's some stuff to figure out, but it works.

I had wanted to use it for a special project I'd been working on, but I don't have time for it right now.

Not quite under quarantine yet myself. And I work in a grocery store, so there's no time to rest for me. I got an official letter from the company and everything, if we go into lockdown, I'm considered an essential employee. But social distancing is thing for me.

Things are already calming down at the grocery store, though. People are calming down after their initial panic buying. Or maybe they just ran out of money, who knows.

But I'm very glad to have you guys here for me.

[Thorn]

This cafe chat thing is a lovely idea, Hunty! I'd be keen, I have alllll the free time now and like the idea of chatting with other bored isolated folks as desired.

[Fraze]

I saw this article on my Facebook a few days ago. It puts a name (and a description and cause) to the complex mix of emotions a lot of us are feeling right now: plague dread. It doesn't offer any solutions per se, but I think it helps to be able to contextualize these feelings.

(I actually have more to say about the article but it's a bit of a tangent and not strictly related to the thread, so I think I'll put it in my diary a bit later instead.)

[Celestial]

Thanks for that article, Fraze! That's a really good one. It helps to talk about these feelings.

I do think overall, shutting down is a good thing. It shows that value is put on human life that we are not just throwing them out there to keep going even as this virus ravages everything. That behaviour happens, sure, but it is almost universally condemned. I actually think a great question for employers after this should be "what did you do during the pandemic and how did you treat your employees?" It will be very telling.

Finally, just want to say that I am very much available for voice chat and calls if anybody needs. <3 Check in with me to see if I am available to talk, but I am happy to just chat. If you want cheering up, I can arrange for Dormouse to chat to you too. Can't be down when the smol chatters because smol is usually quite upbeat.

EDIT: Actually, I do have stuff to add.

This pandemic is seeing unprecedented levels of people reaching out, standing up and helping however they can. Just on my walk yesterday, I passed a sign put up by a dude saying that he will do grocery shopping for the elderly and sorting out payment when all this passes. 250,000 people have signed up to volunteer with the NHS to help vulnerable people. The internet is helping all these calls for aid reach a ton more people. We are living in a scary time but also an amazing time. And in a world where the negative dominates, all this low-level kindness is a very good reminder that people are not all terrible. That we all need each other. And that's a sentiment I can get behind.

So I'm here to support all my friends. <3