“New York is going to be on lockdown next week,” says our son on the phone.
“We already are,” I respond.
“How would you know?” my husband quips, and I laugh.
It’s mud-and-slush season, the time of year when our small rural town near Yellowstone Park falls very quiet, even under normal circumstances.
Few visitors pass through. We don’t get out much ourselves. We love to be outdoors, but spring here is just wet and slippery. My hiking boots will hang out outside the front door until mid-June.
Yesterday was typical for mid-March: Bright sunshine interspersed with waves of heavy, wet snow. It will all be gone by tomorrow.
Not so this pandemic, evidently.
The first known case of Coronavirus-19 has popped up in our thinly populated county. It’s the second case in Wyoming. Suddenly all my local meetings are video conferences, public places are closing down, and everyone seems to be staying indoors. (But we would be anyway.)
Taking the dog out for a walk, I chat with a neighbor taking out his garbage. His attitude is typical for rural Wyoming: Either you’ll catch it and survive, or you’ll catch it and die. I wave at another friend who is just back from a road trip. She tells me they have put themselves in self-quarantine after contact with all those strangers.
As for solitude, ironically the odds are good that I will be less lonely than usual as I continue to connect with people from my laptop. I’ve sat in on quite a few online conferences in the past few months, and made numerous new friends on video calls while growing my network of remote-work advocates — people riding the wave of the telecommuter economy.
This pandemic has their community buzzing, as so many public health and corporate leaders are encouraging people to work from home.
A few days ago, I got together for a Google chat with some new friends on GrowRemote, an international collaboration of towns working to take advantage of the growth of remote work. (It began to expand long before the current crisis, and I was part of that long ago).
There I am in the image, saying something that clearly has the attention of the other three on this screen, and it seems to be troubling to them. I don’t recall what it was. We had begun by talking about the current crisis and how each of our own locales was faring.
“We now live in a world in which we have to live in isolation,” Jonny had said.
Someone remarked about the difference between remote-work experts who were offering guidance to companies newly moving to remote work, and those entrepeneurs who were “monetizing” the crisis by promoting their online products to these companies. “We need to be high-minded right now,” he added. “Not individualistic.”
Rose mentioned that some hotels in Ireland were offering to deliver free meals to elderly people. “That’s what we need,” June replied. “Good news, because so much bad news is going on.”
It was very cordial, and although I’ve met only Rose before, by the end of the hour it felt almost as if we were all friends. Or if not exactly friends, at least colleagues meeting for the first time.
I’m invited to a virtual happy hour this Thursday on Zoom, the free video conference app. Besides Mitch and Stephanie from New York, I’m likely to meet Tyler from Fort Wayne, Nico from Tampa, Will from Boston, and Brandi from San Diego. Not to neglect Per in Poland, Bhagyashree in Germany, and Sherisa in Johannesburg.
How Daniel in New York will coordinate the drinking hours is an interesting question. Looks to me like Sherisa could join at midnight while Brandi gets an early start at 3 PM.
Coordinating time zones is one of the challenges of remote work — or, in this case, of relaxing remotely. So is loneliness and isolation. But I suspect my network will grow considerably as more and more remote-work advocates are in lockdown, wherever they are.
Looks like even in my remote, rural village in Wyoming, social events will be dropping away for a while. But if we get lonely, we can still do what we always do anyway: Invite someone out for a hike.
No physical contact, adequate clothes cover, friendly conversation. Good exercise and fresh air. Just clean your boots afterwards.
Actually close friends and new virtual friends. As June says, there can be good news in the midst of bad news.
© Lois Wingerson, 2020
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