Ask HN: How are you holding up?

We've been doing great. It's been awesome to spend more time with my children since I WFH most of the time, and I no longer have to spend time commuting. I'm lucky enough to have a yard where they can get outside and play without being around other people.

Since we are all home and not traveling we got in touch with the animal sanctuary again and have been fostering another round of kittens. These four bring our total to 18 since we started doing this. This is great because they are adorable, my children love caring for them.

It has also given me time to teach my children some basic microcontroller programming / electronics, which I think will benefit them immensely in the long run.

My wife and I have been walking a bit, ~5 miles a day. This does help me to stay in shape, although excess weight has never been a problem for either of us.

It's not all rosy, though. I miss my friends and family. Family is not as difficult as friends since my family is scattered around the country and we do not see each other on a regular basis.

> I can't imagine anyone in my situation of being cut off from almost all human contact (young+single+alone) for 4 months being "better than ever".

That is me and I feel better than ever.

Personally doing great but also recognizing that many have had a difference experience with it. These things have helped me a ton:

(1) Limit time reading "news" and social media - it's not inherently bad, but there's enough of a gloom glut to depress anyone. Set a timer if you need to. (2) Force yourself to have good daily routines (especially the big 3: eating, sleeping, and exercise - don't have to go extreme on any of them, just don't let them get too out of whack) (3) Brighten someone's day, every day. A small act of service, a phone call, etc. - doesn't have to be big. (4) Go outside, anywhere will do, though time in a forest or in the mountains is hyper therapeutic. (5) Pray. Even if you don't consider yourself religious, you might be surprised what it does to you. If you can't bring yourself to pray per se, at least try to still your mind and meditate for a bit each day.

Things are pretty decent for me.

When the decision was made to work-from-home, I just used my work laptop. A few days later I drove to the office and grabbed my monitors, keyboard, mouse, and various other odds-and-ends. I now have the same setup at home as I did at work. I already had a home-office set up, so all I really had to do was shuffle things around to make room for all of my work stuff.

I did have to buy some stuff to make the home office more usable though. I've added a keyboard tray, cheap portable air conditioner (my home office is west-facing, so afternoons can get quite toasty), and a cat hammock for the window. Of all of those, the cat hammock was the biggest boost to my productivity since it keeps the cat off my lap/keyboard.

I went from an open plan office with 250 people (across probably a dozen departments) to my own private office with a window that opens. My commute went from about 2 hours per day on public transit to about 1 minute per day. I haven't had to buy lunch (or been tempted by vending machines) in over three months. I can open a window and smell freshly cut grass and hear birds chirping.

Socially, I'm actually keeping in touch with friends slightly better than I was pre-lockdown. On the other hand, I'm not seeing friends in person as much as I used to and I'm not walking nearly as much as I used to - these things are slowly taking a toll. My volunteer gig also completely shut down, I really miss that.

I'm not looking forward to going back to the office. I'm not looking forward to wasting 10 hours per week sitting on a bus. Actually, the chances of me being willing to take the bus when there isn't a vaccine available are pretty slim, so that will turn into about 8 hours per week of driving, not to mention the added costs of gas, maintenance, insurance, and possibly parking - none of which I'm looking forward to. My current car is a pig on gas, which is fine since I'm not using it for commuting, so I may need to replace it to make driving to work even a little bit reasonable.

That sounds rough, man. Your post resonates with me because I struggle to work for Big Tech too and I find that smaller customers get stuck on my hourly rate without considering the productivity gains.

Recently heard a quote about depression & anxiety that helped me:

- Depression is when you don't know where you're going.

- Anxiety is when you don't know where you are.