Resurgence, Part II

The health system for which I work is calling its gradual reopening from the COVID-19 minimal staffing "Resurgence". The clinic where I work is actually starting to see urgent patients, but they are still maintaining a skeleton crew, rotating days that they work from home vs. in the clinic itself to minimize the number of people in the clinic, and rescheduling as many appointments as possible to be telemedicine visits.

I, meanwhile, have been told to continue working from home until the clinic is operating more normally, which makes me happy because I can keep my ten-second commute a while longer. I only wish it was possible to have my ten-second commute forever, because getting to and from work is such a bear on a lot of days, but I will take what I can get. Plus, now that we know I can do this, I can work from home on days where Mother Nature is losing her mind with blizzards, hurricanes, etc.

But anyhow, that's how work is going. Meanwhile, the county in which I live is slated to go from Red to Yellow on Friday, June 5. The Archdiocese is going to resume having Masses as of the following day, which means that one of my side gigs will be back up and running in June, hip hip hooray! Next up, I am praying that the neighboring county where my deaf-blind friend lives will start easing restrictions. I would love to resume going there as his aide on Fridays, which is my OTHER side gig.

Every little bit helps. Between the zero overtime and the zero side gigs, this lockdown has been rough on my bottom line. But I still feel fortunate, because there are a lot of folks out there for whom the shutdowns knocked out ALL their income, instead of a noticeable chunk of it. So I absolutely am not complaining; I'm just observing.

I am also crossing my fingers that everyone who really needs their income stream to be jump-started ASAP will be among the first to return to work when the restrictions are lifted in earnest. We absolutely had to enact the social distancing and the closures, because the virus is no joke. But I know that the precautions that have kept people from getting sick (or worse) have caused hardships in a lot of households. Compared to their challenges, my altered bottom line is nothing. So I hope they can start returning to normal as soon as it's safe.