Tag: work from home

Tuesday June 16th, 2020

I did exercises this morning. During push-ups, I am trying to stay up on my toes for more repetitions, and today was better. During karate class, Sensei had us do sets of thirty push-ups, sit-ups and squats in between various exercises. I had one more set of thirty to do after class in order to get in my evening ninety.

F lead kihon and did a good job, though she has not lead in a while, and spaced on the names of some moves that she normally knows. Nerves, most likely, but her form is crisp. She set a steady, quick pace. We were out of breath after her kihon.

Sensei returned to third kyu syllabus for another type of exercise: we did ten of each move on both the right and left sides. So, after doing this, it was easy to remember the syllabus. Also, it is a method of using the syllabus as a workout. He said the IFK will often have students do this for multiple syllabi.

A younger version of my step-mother appeared in my dreams for a few nights in a row. She read my diary, though this didn’t bother me. Since it was published, I was glad to have a reader. In another dream, she was in a room with a girl strongly resembling her daughter, my younger step-sister, who died about ten years ago. I should get in touch with my sister and let her know about the dreams.

Around lunch time, I went to the office to retrieve my things. The company is giving up one of the floors of our building, and they are moving other folks into our offices. I don’t know when this will happen. For now, most of us work from home and will in the near future, given we are not furloughed.

I enjoy working from home. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before. We can thank the pandemic for significantly reduced traffic and more family time . One friend from the dojo, a parent of two, told me that her husband, before the pandemic, was never home from dinner. He drove to and from work for over an hour. His commute, in addition to working overtime, meant he simply arrived home well after family dinner. Since the shutdown, he has not missed a family dinner.

Obviously the loss of life and the isolation that many feel as a result of the pandemic are terrible. Hopefully we as a society will figure out how to be better prepared for these events in the future. If we can avoid or minimize suffering and death, while hanging onto improvements in quality of life, this is best.

Thursday May 14th, 2020

It’s Virtual Friday, since we are on four day weeks at work. Starting this Monday, the company will furlough half our team in character effects. Only our lead, and two of us who write a lot of tools, will be kept for now. Without work, however, we are unsure how long the company can keep any of us.

Yesterday I ran for twenty minutes while listening to the Two Dope Queens podcast. After work, on the balcony, I got in my evening exercises. Push-ups, even outdoors, were still difficult. I did notice that our lemon tree, which has been less productive lately, did have two lemons.

During lunch today, I will need to do list collating for the Temple. Well, that will make relaxing this evening all the more fun. I do need to think about the fact that this will be an extra hour of sitting at the computer. Sitting on an exercise ball instead of in a chair should help me stay a bit more fit and comfortable.

I will miss taking a walk and calling a friend or relative. I usually do that during my free lunch periods. Between my new lunchtime run, and kids borrowing my cell for school assignments, and chores, I have walked around our neighborhood less in the past couple weeks. Funny, I cannot remember any longer what I did during my lunch break on Tuesday.

Well, this is turning into a giant dump of all the little things on my “to-do” list. Sensei said what needs to be done, will be done. He’s right.

Last night, I put up a back log day from April. On that day, I wrote about my sister not having health insurance, but still being asked by her employer to come into the office. That’s not a small worry. That’s a big worry. I should talk to her again about health insurance.

Tuesday April 14th, 2020

The Back Log

I did push-ups, sit-ups and squats last night and this morning. Last night, I managed to stay up on my toes for sixty (“tricep” thirty, “chest” thirty) and did a few extras. This morning, I did ten more “tricep” push-ups on my knees. I botched the Japanese count, however, because I listened too intently to the kids’ chatter.

They joked about a picture in F’s Spanish textbook: a cartoon of an older man named Jorge, riding a bicycle.

“He’s happy about everything!” chuckled F.

“Well, you need to be, when you’re seventy. You don’t have much time left!” I said, after they showed me the illustration. It was a silly picture.

Granted, what I said wasn’t exactly true: we may have a lot to worry about at seventy. Ideally we’ve learned what’s worth worrying about and what’s not. Wisdom has got to creep in sometime. Seventy seems like a good time for it.

(So weird: while I typed this entry into the site, we had a small earth quake. I kept typing. It didn’t feel like a large one but the sound was eerie.)

I spent thirty minutes on the treadmill: five minute walk to warm-up, twenty minutes jogging and five minutes walking to cool down. I listened to “Two Dope Queens.” They interviewed Michelle Obama. She’s down to earth. She talked about empowering girls around the globe and hair care. It gives you a glimpse into the lives of others: what’s different and what’s similar. Hair talk is fun.

A power plant had an explosion in Burbank over the weekend. Our IT folks had to go into our building and reboot all the workstations. They work hard.

While working from home, we finish shots, but it takes longer and the supervisors’ expectations are a moving target. At times it’s frustrating. I have been trying to let go of whatever expectations I have had regarding what my job should be, including the expectations laid out when I started, and just do the best that I can with what it actually is.

This company pays me by the hour. I do –or will–decide –whether or not I want to keep doing this job long term. For now, I remind myself that I have control over my own fate. My coworkers and I are lucky: we have jobs and we are able to work from home. Many of our friends, family members and neighbors are not working, or their jobs put them in danger of contracting the virus. This is not the case for my coworkers and me.

Somehow my timer didn’t start. I am outside and the birds are singing. And I have eight minutes to get dressed and clock in.