So we’re now… I don’t know, more than several days into the quarantine. I guess it varies, depending on location and on what you consider to be the start of it — Birmingham’s shelter-in-place went into effect March 24, which means your girl will have been sheltering in her own place for ten straight weeks as of tomorrow. Two and a half months into the quarantine, then.
Is it getting tedious for you? It’s getting kind of tedious for me.
Still necessary. But tedious.
I’m not going to lie — there are a lot of things that have surprised-disappointed me. I honestly didn’t think this level of restriction would last this long, because I guess I expected people to adhere to recommendations on account of, y’know, VIRAL PANDEMIC, which I suppose was silly of me. And I’ve been surprised recently at the number of people who are so unwilling to do simple things like wear masks — I mean, they are getting what they’ve been asking for, albeit with a couple of little changes, but I guess what they’ve really been asking for is for things to go completely back to the way they were, which isn’t going to happen any time soon or, realistically, possibly ever. And I suppose that was silly of me, too.
But that’s not what this post is about.
The previous paragraph notwithstanding, I don’t consider myself a Negative Nancy — I’m more of a Realistic Rhoda, or maybe a Pragmatic Paula. I do, admittedly, have a tendency to start sentences with, “Not to be a Negative Nancy…” and then lay down some Rhoda Rhealism. So this time, I’m going with straight-up positivity in three things, just as a conversation starter, that have pleasantly surprised me about the past months of quarantine.
1. How smoothly clients have taken to the necessities of remote work
A lot of them had actually embraced many of the tech solutions that make remote work easy — cloud-based project management systems, tools like Google Docs for easy file sharing and management, Slack for communication. But even the ones who have been kind of forced into technology adoption by our current circumstances have embraced it pretty quickly, and largely without complaint. Hopefully, this is something they’ll decide to keep up as an efficiency tool even after everyone’s at the office again.
(Also, my seventysomething parents successfully put together a family-wide Zoom call last weekend, so cheers to them for that, too.)
2. How quickly people have adjusted to the new normal
Things were definitely stressful early on — as is to be expected. Having to abruptly move work, school, gym, mall, movie theater, and restaurants inside is enough of an adjustment in and of itself, even without a pandemic raging outside. And the people (even seasoned work-from-homers like myself) who were expressing various forms of distress were certainly within their rights to do so. But those expressions of distress are fewer and farther between — not because circumstances are better, certainly, because they aren’t, not not because distressed people are being pressured into silence, but because people have had time to feel around and see how everything works, and to develop habits that also work within this new context.
I’ve also noticed people being a lot more patient and accommodating — and that might be even more surprising and gratifying. The appearance of a barking dog or pantsless toddler in the background of a Zoom call is now accepted as part of work-from-home life, and a parent who JUST CAN’T with the sixth-grade math and the first-grade reading and the tests and the classes is met with more sympathy and less judgment. It hasn’t necessarily gotten any easier, per se, but people have been more understanding about how not-easy it is, and that’s nice to see.
3. The amount of “in these difficult times…” copy I haven’t been asked to write
To be clear: I’m not trying to slam brands that have released “in these difficult times” messaging (although a little bit of added creativity wouldn’t hurt), but I very much appreciate the ones that put a little more thought into coming up with something that really does come from the heart. Everything I’ve been asked to write since this pandemic began — and pretty much all of it has included at least a passing reference to the pandemic, because it’s not exactly something that’s avoidable at the moment — has provided something of value. Information. Comfort. Entertainment. Something beyond, “Hey, don’t forget that we exist!” Something that’s about the people, not the brand.
And, I mean, yeah, part of that is because I’m just an awesome writer. But it’s also because brands legitimately do understand that people need sincere, honest communication right now and not just sentiment. In these difficult times.
Your turn.
So that’s me. But I always get to do the talking here. (It’s one of the benefits of the gig.) How are things going for you, now that the novelty of quarantine has worn off and we’re stuck with the reality of it? Anything unexpected? Anything completely expected? Don’t feel obliged to keep it positive, just because I did — this is a safe space, and your feeling are relevant.
(Unless your feelings are, “Caperton, we’d love to see less navel-gazing and more ad-related content on this stupid blog.” That’s just hurtful.)
(I’m kidding. Unload, if you need to unload. That’s what I’m here for. That, and more ad-related, non-navel-gazing content in the future.)