Friday Fun: What is the greatest gift for you from our current reality in a covid pandemic?

[Peter Jessen]

Hello and Happy Friday from Land O' Lakes, Florida, USA!

Today's Friday Fun is a topic about the balance in the universe - every negative has a positive and every positive has a negative. What is the greatest gift for you from our current reality in a covid-19 pandemic?

While many of us may have lost someone to the disease (my mother-in-law lost a close friend, as did my cousin) we have all gained as well, if we are willing to look for the "silver lining."

For me some of the gifts this pandemic has bestowed on me are:

• a greater appreciation for how precious life is,
• more time with my wife and daughter (and extended family),
• working from home instead of being on a plane every other week,
• and probably most significant is deciding to build two new homes across the street from each other - one for my family and in-laws and the other for my 82-year old mother - so we can spend as much time together as possible in her remaining years.

And yes, there are balancing downsides to all of the above. :-)

So what are your covid-19 pandemic gifts?

[Jimmy Seddon]

This is a great topic @Peter Jessen!  I like the concept of looking for the positives that have come from the situation we are in.

I think the most important thing at the moment for me is the fact that my family and I have been able to remain safe and healthy this entire time.

On a personal level, I hate commuting, I normally have a 45 minute drive to and from work every day.  Working from home has given me the opportunity to do other things like walking the dog first thing in the morning.

My son is back in daycare and working remotely allows me to be at home to help assist in getting him ready and being able to be a part of dropping him off and picking him up from daycare which before COVID-19 my wife had to do by herself.

I'm not an overly outgoing and social person, contrary to how I may act on the Atlassian Online Community, but I'm much more open in virtual means, and as many people have been forced into this situation, I actually interacted with some friends virtually more regularly than ever before.

While there are a great many things that have not been good, you are correct there are definitely some silver linings!

[Peter Jessen]

Thanks for sharing, @Jimmy Seddon ! Not bad for an introvert. :-)

[Matt Doar]

Yes, there are a few.

1. No commute. I don't miss the SF Bay Area roads at all.

2. Regular lunch with our older children, and our children being old enough to do things without us.

3. I'm thankful that we lost people while we could still mourn together. Grim, but true.

[Peter Jessen]

@Matt Doar- I've had clients in the SF Bay area and LA area. I'd pay to avoid those commutes! And I definitely get #3. The stories of NYC at the worst were heartbreaking.

[Katie McDaniel]

No commute is #1! I enjoy being able to snack whenever I feel like it. 

My children are the perfect age for this - old enough to do things without us, but young enough that they don't hate us yet. 

I have learned to love reading books again, and have spent many evenings sitting on our back porch, playing ukulele, and just chilling. 

Also...I haven't been to a child's birthday party in MONTHS! Might be worth it for that alone! ;)

[Earl McCutcheon]

One thing I see as a really big positive goes right in line with everyones comment on No Commute, but rather the outcome of no commutes where people being removed from nature for a short period gave us extremely overwhelming and undeniable evidence showing just how much of a dramatic impact humans have on the environment and nature. 

Just a few examples are the Venice canal running clear,  and wild animals are returning to areas that they have not been seen in for decades.  The act of removing planes from the skies and shutting down factories caused a huge percentage of reduction in air pollution in a matter of days that had a visible impact from space,  with fishing fleets around the world sit mostly idle some fish species such as herring have double their global biomass in less than a year.  and the list goes on.......

But its realistically the slap in the face of evidence that was needed to remove any argument to the contrary that previously existed for climate change deniers,  as only after ~6 months or so of lock downs so much has changed by simply reducing wasteful and pollution causing practices.

I have already seen tons of papers on the data points rolling out and there are a lot of organizations taking note so Hopefully we can all work together to take this data and use it to make the world a much better place to live for generations to come :)

[Fabienne Gerhard]

Thanks for this topic @Peter Jessen it's so true, everything negative also has some positive things coming with it. 

• Seeing the nature breathing a little bit more 
• I got more fit because I took bike to work instead of bus/train etc. also found my interest in some other sports like running (I'm definitly not good), fitness aso
• Working from home is possible!
• People finding together online from all around the world during this time 🤩 (not all - but many and it keeps rising) Faith in humanity restored!

[Heth Siemer]

"Seeing the nature breathing a little bit more"

Probably the only reason why I'm like, okay maybe COVID isn't the worst thing ever.

[Thomas Schlegel]

The greatest gift is, as many others said already, 2 hours everyday, not sitting in a train to the office and back home. More time to sleep and spend time with my husband and our cats. I think, our daily working routine will change, it has already and I‘m sure this will remain. I don’t want to stay at home five days a week, but two or three days would be great. 

Also, I’m glad to see people acting reasonably and taking care of each other, when it really matters, at least for a while.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I've got three.  None of them are big things though

A number of my friends in medical areas are reporting some great things outside Covid - social distancing seeming to lead to winter 'flu cases down by two thirds in their southern hemisphere homes, and (anecdotally), fewer colds and other diseases.

I'm an introvert and I don't want to be around strangers.  It's fantastic to be able to yell "get away from me" in public and not get funny looks for ignoring or moving away from strangers.

I've lived in one house for 12 years now.  I could name more of the cats who visit our garden than neighbours, until April this year.  Now, I can name more humans, because most of the street and people who back on to us have got together to try to help.  We've got support groups who are shopping for each other while some of us isolate, we've got people checking up on neighbours to see if they're ok, one of our neighbours is a care home, who, once the government provided enough PPE (three months too late), they got too much, so they share.  Heck, we're even walking each other's dogs if a dog-owner is worried about going out.  (Actually, I wouldn't have minded that before, I love the dog that lives at 33, and would have dog-napped her long ago if I didn't like her owner)

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

Opposite end of the "vert" scale as you Nic but I still like my space... so +1 for the 2nd point 😉👍

[Heth Siemer]

I have anxiety issues and don't like being home alone, so being forced to work from home by myself while my bf was at work was not going too hot at the start. So my bf got me Valkyrie!

Pretty sure she is over me taking a billion pictures of her by now.

[Fabienne Gerhard]

This is cuteness overload 😍

[Jodi LeBlanc]

Great topic Peter! For me it was a break from work travel, more time outdoors, social distance swimming and biking with friends and family and appreciating the little things (which I always did before, but even more now). My work ramped up so the months flew by quickly. Now enjoying a 2 weeks staycation and enjoying being a tourist where I live. 

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

COVID-19 has really sucked for so many people.
I have heard such bad horror stories of people losing loved ones due to the disease itself, or some other illness... not being able to go to funerals etc, so I feel exceptionally blessed that I have not experienced this! #Lucky #Blessed

My personal silver lining is that a particular service line at work that I hate with every fiber in my body has been naturally killed off due lock-down and as both current projects are now over and pre-sales is halted, I've now shifted into a different product/service division so I am quickly and surely moving away from a really rotten part of the business. Happy Days! 😊💙👍

[Andy - PTC Redundant]

2nd place is hygiene in the gym... people are now (finally) on my level when it comes to keeping distance and cleaning machines/equipment after use. Hah! 🤓🧼🧽

[Ana Martorano]

Hi all! It was so nice to read all the responses and different points of view. For me also #1 is not having to "go to work", like everyone else I don't enjoy sitting in the train 1 hour everyday but the consequences are the best thing: having more time at home allows me to finally take care of many things I've been neglecting, I have an urban garden now, I get to bring and pick up my daughter from school and have more time to spend with her, overall I feel less frustrated.

As some of you mentioned above, the evident no longer deniable negative impact we have on our environment made me reflect a lot about our attitudes towards nature and how I can be more of an earth inhabitant and less like a virus.

[LarryBrock]

Having had my travel completely shut down has helped me in two ways.  The first is that I'm eating better because, as one can imagine, it's really hard to eat healthy on the road. The second is that I'm getting time to get out on my mountain bike with regularity (like 4-6 times a week).  The combination has helped me lose 15lbs since March.  Woohoo!!!

[Fazila Ashraf]

More time with my daughter!

I have got 'Homeschool teacher' added to my resume now  ;)

[Gonchik Tsymzhitov]

More time with my cat