Day 11

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Happy Friday Eve dear friends and fellow Covid-19 warriors. Some more of you have been checking in and commenting – I really appreciate the feedback! Does not make me feel as much like the weird person on the street that is loudly talking to themselves.

So this is Day 11, in blog days at least. I realized, in yesterday’s post I completely omitted the irony (or intent?) of the day, Mr. DeSantis chose for his stay@home order (thanks for the reminder, Jimmy Kimmel!). April’s fools day of all days. So I guess the Covidiot’s had a good laugh about the prank and are ready to go on with their lives as they know them. It’s taking effect tonight at midnight, I will report!

Based on the “rules” and “exceptions” of the stay@home order, not much if anything will change for Henning, Sam and I. Sam’s days will continue to pretty much look like this:

It even looks like Starbucks will still offer their drive thru service too as delivery and pick-up from restaurants will still be allowed. They are considering these as essential – talking about coffee, I couldn’t agree more. Trust me, if you have an early morning call scheduled with me, you will agree!

So how are you guys holding up? Are you going crazy already? Driving others with you crazy? Been driven crazy by your loved ones?

How are you taking care of your physical and most importantly your mental health? Today my friend from Munich continued to send me every single bad fact and news article about the dire situation of unemployment in the US. SUPER depressing. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think (and have shared that before) that ignoring your feelings is a good idea. Being anxious is a good sensor to alert you of imminent danger. However, I am living by the principle, that too much of one thing can become a problem. Even if that one thing, is not necessarily a bad thing. Ice cream for example. Not a bad thing and there were times, when I thought having too much of it was impossible. I was wrong. Everyone that is or was obese or diabetic knows, what I am talking about.

So too much anxiety easily leads to panic, and we already discussed that panic is not helpful. If you would like to learn more about my personal example, you can find it here: https://mykindofsuccess.net/common-sense/

So he shared with me, that we have 10M new unemployed people in just one week. He then went on to tell me, it’s going to be 20M by next week. And that IS horrible. And most importantly super sad. And it is also something, that is absolutely and entirely out of my control. So I can choose to get myself scared about it, and walk around (or be locked down) with a cloud over my head from now on. But see, there is a risk associated with that. With a cloud over my head, I will start losing focus on my job and instead focus on all the bad things happening around me. And with that focus, the cloud will get bigger and bigger etc.

I am sure you have an idea where that might be leading. I might end up being the 20,000,001. And that won’t help any of the others, at all. So instead I am allowing myself the thought, that this is sad and bad. And then I will go ahead and think about what I CAN do. I can continue to focus on my job and my team. And with me doing that and them being encouraged to do the same, I can do my very best for all of us to continue doing a great job, that we are getting to keep as an outcome. Much better outlook, isn’t it?

We are lucky. We are working for a company that puts their people first. Our CEO is communicating with all of us on a regular and often times inspiring basis. And he has made a pledge, that should give many of us some peace of mind in these difficult times. I am well aware, this year is going to be a write off, if we are lucky it’s only going to be this year. But companies, that will put their people first, will strive as they have created invaluable loyalty. You can watch his video below:

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6650493006451392512/

Here are a few things, that you can do, to keep the clouds small and not let them grow into weeks of heavy storms:

• Continue to be selective about what you watch and how much of it. Don’t ignore the facts, control the dosage
• Make sure you get sufficient physical activity. Even if you are stuck in an apartment, try to walk to online running / walking or exercise videos. Physical activity will relief stress and help also exhaust your body, so your mind can get rest.
• Get distraction – watch something funny or cute or something that keeps your mind occupied with something else than your current situation.
• Try something new like cooking a new recipe or baking a new cake and then celebrate enjoying it.
• Get dressed up once a week in your nicest attire and have celebratory dinner.
• When an update is overwhelming, try to break it up into smaller, better digestible pieces and think about, how you might be able to influence, impact or even control these (see my example above – breaking down the overwhelming number of 10-20 M unemployed Americans to my direct team and myself and being able to control our performance to not become a part of them).
• Or let’s take the updates on the daily growths of infections and the overwhelming amount of infected people. There is two things you can do, to not lose your mind about these numbers. You can first get facts about huge amounts of cured as well. Secondly, you can break this down to the part that you can control. When you are strictly practicing Social Distancing, you are making a huge contribution to lowering the numbers that scare you.

Do you have other tips, you can share with the other readers? What’s keeping your mind from going bananas?

Just a quick reminder, to please join in on the act of kindness challenge. It does NOT at all have to do with spending money. Some might be able to donate money to help, but there is so much more that can be done to show kindness and support. In times like these, where Covidiots have many faces and seem to come up with a never ending array of stupid ideas, every little act of kindness will help to put karma back into balance.

Let’s talk about the latest Covidiot I heard about. There is this guy in Brooklyn, NY, that just got arrested by the Feds (FBI) after they detected he was hoarding – brace yourself for what’s coming – more than 190,000 N95 respirator masks, nearly 600,000 medical gloves, 130,000 surgical masks etc. – to sell them to Doctors and Nurses for as much as 700% above market value, which they were paying so they could protect themselves while saving lives.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, PEOPLE?

I am not one to wish for something bad to happen to anyone. And I am hoping, that the justice system will do its job here. Just in case it does not – what goes around, comes around. I am a true believer in that. In this case, I am not sure which one I want to happen first, though.

It is 3 hours until Midnight and while it’s likely not going to be a big change for my family and I, I am seriously hoping for some change to happen in the behavior of the ponytail clubs and other Covidiots out here in Florida. Numbers climbed above 8,000 and even though I am sure DeSantis at least partly thinks it is, this whole situation is no April’s fools day prank. And while we should not let this drive us straight into a depression, we definitely should take this seriously enough. None of the inconveniences we might have to endure due to a stay@home order will feel as bad as having had a (involuntary) part in getting someone killed. If you do not stay the f*** at home, it will be a negligent part.

Here’s to another day in this very crazy and weird new normal world. I will be back here tomorrow, together with my little furry work companion and stories from my family’ s day! Until then, I hope you guys can sleep as deep and happily, as this little one, dreaming of the sweet potatoes he was attempting to “guard”, when he fell asleep.

Keep your distance, stay healthy, have nice dreams and take care!

Hugs,

Nannette