A New Reality

When I searched my photos for the image of a laptop (thanks, AI) I came across this picture of my old company Macbook. I had stuck that "alles wird gut" (everything will be alright) message on its keypad to remind myself that indeed it would. There were times when I could barely motivate myself to get out of bed and go to work as I was unhappy on so many levels. These days, work is rather a welcome distraction from all the apocalyptic news updates. Days before schools were ordered to be closed and travel bans issued Highflyer and I started a new routine: watch a film (sometimes on an old school DVD even) then go to bed early(ish) to catch a healthy dose of sleep in order to be better equipped to battle nasty viruses. It was actually quite nice and cosy and we liked our new "old people" routine. Now that it's not an option, but a necessity for lack of other distractions, it feels less fun and when we decided to cancel our planned ski weekend in Tyrol (not in the resorts that we later found out would be isolated) it was with a very heavy heart as this had been something I had looked forward to for weeks. When our canteen stopped putting up a salad buffet and replaced glasses you could pick up yourself with plastic cups issued from the person serving your food behind the counter (wearing rubber gloves) I rolled up my eyes, but as the bad news grow, I am less keen on hanging out with large groups of people myself. I am sure that when this crisis is over (hopefully soon) we will all have adopted a few good rules (such as more hygiene) and reconsider a few bad habits. Whether stockpiling toilet paper will be one of them remains to be seen...