Ask HN: How are you holding up?

I'm in a country where there hasn't been any lockdown but I've taken the opportunity to go into voluntarily isolation anyway. I don't like people so it has been a blessing to finally be able to just bail on all social activities with a good reason and help the society at the same time.

I could continue like this for the rest of my life so very happy about my personal situation. Still worried about the world though.

How can I help? What kind of positions have you been applying for?

Gained weight, lost money on stock market, got expelled for poor grades.

I love getting to spend extra time with my SO. And I love not having a commute. My quality of life has gone up immensely.

But I live in a tiny, 1 bedroom, city-center apartment. The desk I work at all day, is the desk that I also would come home to after work, and unwind/relax at.

There is no other space available in this apartment where I can put up an "office". It is simply too small. The best option I have is to sit at the "kitchen" table 4 feet away, but then i can't use my monitor.

The end result is I am having a horrific time at work.

On my best days, I think I can manage 80% of what I used to do workwise, at the office. On the worst days, its maybe 5%.

I think its compounded by the fact that I relatively recently became a manager.

There are many aspects of my job that I do not like anymore. I have been largely removed from real engineering. My PM was cut for budget/political reasons, so the amount of rote PM work that lands on my desk has gone up significantly, etc. But I was okay with this all regardless, because I derived satisfaction from managing my team well, and learning how to do so.

Now that we are entirely wfh, from a business perspective little has changed (besides the layoffs we just went through). I am capable of managing remotely. But personally, any positive feedback that came with management has evaporated. Where I could previously watch my team interact throughout the day, and see the impact I was making on company/team culture, or at least have a physical/visual reaffirmation that I have created a positive environment for my people (its a small company), I now have no positive social feedback, just lots of 1:1 video calls, which quite frankly, don't cut it on a personal level.

The combination of these two things has been awful and I am genuinely having an extremely hard time with it.

I really need help

I'm doing OK.

At first I loved the isolation, lack of traffic, and lack of commute and having to be at work. I realized I have strong social anxiety and the part of my brain that has to work extra hard to get along with people finally got a well deserved break. I put about 10,000 miles on my car during the pandemic--I live in the Washington DC area and the lack of traffic was one of the best feelings ever, especially since I had just bought my first real sports car last year. I started doing Geohashing again (the game invented by Randall Monroe: https://geohashing.site/geohashing/Main_Page) Under the auspices of geohashing I hiked every mountain, lake, river, and dale I could find within a 2 hour radius of my house. At one point I used cruise control for 65 miles continuously on one of the most notoriously congested highways in the area (I-66). That may have been the highlight of the pandemic for me. I now have an intimate understanding of the terrain from Southeastern PA to western MD to all of Northern VA and even much of WVA and learned a lot of history in the process.

However there were some down sides. I have gained a TON of weight. The long drives and medium-to-long hikes didn't make up for the physical activity I was getting from going to the gym every day. I discovered many new delicious restaurants in the area in the name of "supporting local business."

Also, finally, in the last few weeks, my social batteries finally recharged, and I'm starting to get lonely again.

Also, traffic is back, so no more long rides.

Also, I caught Lyme disease due to all the deep woods hiking. It's resolving well and my knee feels slightly better each day (I did make the mistake of continuing to hike strenuously on it when it first swelled up and even now try to push it a little too far either with exercise or bike rides)

The good news is, gyms just opened back up.

Overall I would say my mental health is better than it was before the pandemic, and my physical health is worse.

My job has remained steady and engaging.