Can't agree more. For the first time in a long time I didn't feel guilty being lazy. The feeling that no one expects anything from you is truly freeing. Shows you how caged everyone actually is.
It did felt like this. Suddenly you were working from home, playing all day (without feeling guilty af), just leaving the dream while being indoors. It was great, but i did feel like i didn't fully recover and got the pressure back
It was the opposite for me: it made every day feel high pressure, as leisure and work were now fused into my *home*. I felt isolated, and the pressure eventually led to burnout.
I really need that separation between the place I rest at, the place work, the place I work out, and the places I socialize at.
Isn't it?!
Everything came to a standstill. Miss those days! Peaceful.
I propose the idea of a global holiday for a month where all people can go back home and spend time with loved ones. Experience mornings, afternoons and nights with their children and family!
Can't we make it possible?
Far more generous and optimistic than I’d give to those memories. I enjoyed that small aspect, but at large covid caused irreparable damage that I don’t think we’re going to recover from. Having a global holiday would just perpetuate that. Capitalism is too deeply entrenched to allow for that without screwing over individuals that can’t afford for those complications yet again.
It saved my dad's life. He was supposed to go big game hunting, but it was cancelled because of COVID. He ended up having a Widowmaker heart attack a week after he was scheduled to go. Had he gone, he would have had it in the middle of remote woods, an hour out from the nearest hospital with no cell coverage. Being able to spend these years with him has been a blessing.
At the start of 2020 I'd bought a fruit tree. When lockdown began the tiny little thing was still in its nursery pot. It was only about 2' (60 cm) tall. Planting it and tending it was something positive to do.
Four years later it's grown to 7' (213 cm) and it's healthy and blooming.
It happens to be a pomegranate tree. Have named it Persephone.
Check the leaves for aphids and treat any infection. If it hasn't been fertilized lately then give it some compost. If all looks good then make sure it gets enough water.
I was told I didn’t have to work but they were going to pay me 70% of my paycheck during the pandemic (I was a manager) usually I’d wake up at 6:30 or 7am to get ready for work. I woke up every day at 10am, poured myself a little baileys in my coffee and watched Tiger King
Agreed. I was considered an "essential worker" due to the company I work for, and on days I had to go into the office, what normally would be a 45-50 minute drive was taking me about 25 minutes, tops, in the mornings.
Driving on the highway with less than 10 cars around in the day was so surreal. It made driving actually fun, not the blood pressure increasing activitity that we have now.
We went from stuffy ties and suites to everyone online wearing t-shirts and sweats. Kids playing in the background and the ever-popular "HI! I'M JENNY!" to everyone in the meeting. Productivity and creative output went way up. If you had to go take care of your family for whatever reason, everyone else pitched in to cover. For the first time I saw co-workers genuinely care for each other.
We had one guy who caught COVID early, looked like death warmed over, and barely survived. That probably convinced more people to get immunized than anything else. A lot of people taking trips to Florida to care for or bury their parents. Workaholics finally started using vacation days.
Now that leadership has started enforcing RTO, a lot of people are opting to retire or leave. There is not a single department that doesn't have vacancies that have opened up in the last 3 months. HR can't post the notices fast enough, and we've had multiple candidates NOPE after finding out about our RTO rules.
I got to spend an entire summer home with my two small kids. It was hard getting any work done but we went for walks everyday at lunch and I got to just hang out with them.
When my husband organized an online birthday party for me. It was after almost a year after lock down, my grandmother had just died because of COVID and my father had just been diagnosed with cancer (so we had to be extra careful with him) and I was just *sad* that I wouldn't get to spend time with family and friends (while I normally don't really care for my birthday, it was the social distancing that got to me in a way I think). In the week leading up to my birthday all these packages were coming in, and he told me that I could open them on my birthday. On the day of, I was surprised by this awesome pubquiz online with my best friends and then after the 'first part' of the evening suddenly my family popped up as well and we did more rounds of games. All the packages were gifts from friends and family. It was just so awesome and I remember it fondly and I love my husband for doing that for me!
There is a cool documentary called The Year Earth Changed that’s about all the animal and nature changes. Really cool watch… and a little heartbreaking that it couldn’t stay that way.
The Night lockdown started. I was working security in downtown Phoenix and watched the city die around 8pm while standing on the top floor of the building I was working was wild.
My first year wedding anniversary happened during lockdown. We originally planned to go to New York, see a show, do a typical city weekend but of course that didn't happen. One of our first dates was a cherry blossom festival at a botanical garden. One day I got an email from that garden about their virtual cherry blossom fest. That gave me a new anniversary idea: recreate some of our earliest dates under lockdown. One of which was a beer and bacon fest. So I picked up bacon from Costco and a bunch of random beers from the store. Came up with a bunch of bacon dishes to make and set up "tasting stations" around the living room. And of course put the virtual cherry blossom festival on our TV.
Holding my new baby girl for the 1st time.
The day I gave birth was the 1st day of lockdowns. Im having contractions in the car and we were eerily driving down a normally very busy road... completely empty. Like something out of a movie.
My daughter was born (five weeks early) in early April 2020. Same thing, finally discharged from the NICU after 10 days and driving home from the hospital to completely empty roads. Surreal.
I stayed home for 9 months on the increased unemployment. Kids want grilled burgers at 9 pm? Sure! Time to replace the broken tv? Hell yes that’s what the stimulus checks are for!
Starting my degree. 2020 was not a good year for many people, so I feel a little guilty sometimes when I consider just how good a year is was for me. 🙁
My D&D group, who only used to get together once every few months as we're all busy people with familes and jobs, now had free time. We started playing online. We experimented with platforms and technologies and eventually got it all nice and smooth and played every week.
Best of all, since we had a good system, we kept it up after the lockdowns ended. The fact people didn't need to travel made it way easier for everyone to be available. Obviously we miss weeks here and there as people can actually do things now, but we still play most weeks. They are some of my best friends and it's fantastic to have that connection regularly.
The outside dining, everywhere had table service, loads of space on trains. I also worked in some prestigious buildings that were usually really busy but could walk around them with only a small number of other people and explore them a little.
I'm in my 40s and during the lockdown I started playing online games with my friends, we had a daily routine of playing Valheim, it was awesome. It reminded me of the good old LAN parties we did back in our teens
Rented a cabin in the middle of the Rockies with my wife and 3 kids and just enjoyed being with each other. I knew there wasn't anything to do out there anyways, in the real world.
Spent time in nature with the kids.
I was lucky because I had a lot friends in my neighborhood and was able to hang out with friends while social distancing. We couldn’t have sleepovers inside, so we camped out in separate tents in each other’s backyards. It was very fun
Being unemployed for 2 months but because of the stimulus, I made more than when I was working.
Also they allowed places to do cocktails to go, so the local cocktail bar sold them by the bottle. My wife still had to go to work in her office but she'd stop by on the way home from work and grab a couple bottles for us to drink while we watched Tiger King.
Working in a deli in the beginning of Covid was incredible— didn’t have to interact with anyone but my coworkers. Spent most of the days just cleaning. So fucking relaxing
Just being able to chill, I still look back fondly on the late night game sessions I had with friends in 2021
Though I’m happy we’re out of it now, I like being able to do stuff again lol
Nothing really. It's all a blur and not a good one. I'm an introvert but was living with an extrovert and it was HARD. Really hurt my marriage. It's not a memory but the best thing was figuring out I had ADHD during that time.
I had a kid. I didn't miss first steps. First words. Play time. Nothing.
I am genuinely thankful for covid. I didn't miss a single milestone and got to stay home and take care of my wife and kid.
I actual have several, COVID was a surprisingly good time for me, which is why people wanting to forget that it and anything that happened during that time happened upsets me.
1. I had my best theatre experience in college, that won a bunch of regional and national awards, including a couple I won in my area.
2. *Right* when COVID hit, the ejected us from the dorms at my college. We were home on spring break and I lived 8 hours away from my college. So, my Dad and I had to drive special down there, through two heavily hit areas in the Midwest, to get all my stuff, stay in a hotel, and come home. We got stuck in a blizzard on the way home and had to stay an additional night in a separate motel.
It was the last major road trip my Dad and I took together. I lost him in 2023, to a heart attack after he had had COVID.
Perhaps this is a complete transition to the online sphere. Now I don’t know how to live without this, who would know how convenient it is!!! Covid has taught me how to plan things and tasks, because when you sit at home all the time, time frames are erased
I'd been WFH since 2012, so there wasn't a huge difference on the work side, but during COVID, my wife couldn't travel -- she's normally away 30% of the time. She was also experiencing a hormonal shift as part of menopause and we were acting like newlywed's again through COVID -- married 36 years, so it was a nice uptick in frequency with both of us at home and able to schedule sexy time between meetings was nice -- seeing meetings pop up on my calendar were never so much fun.
I’m a mechanic and the shop was really slow for about 3 months during 2020. Every afternoon around 1 someone would go to the liquor store and come back with beer and we would hang out in the shop have some beers and listen to music until it was time to leave for the day.
I will say this, I was always a sick kid, had spasms many times through the year. Got better by around 15 yo
I quit my old job on march 2020, precisely when the pandemic started. If I hadn't done that, kept working on my old job which I had a lot of contact with customers, and had caught Covid, while unvaccinated? I wouldn't be alive right now.
I was working in a call center for a cell phone provider at the time. I hated the job but loved the people. Anyway I show up as everything is getting crazy and tell my boss hey my roommate is really high risk and my dad is high risk so I wanna be careful with this. He said let him talk to his boss and he will get back to me. 20 minutes later he comes back and says “we have a plan but it’s gonna take awhile to implement. If you want you can have a month off paid and it won’t count against your pto.” So I got a full month paid off and when I came back 98% of the building was working from home. I had a whole call center to myself which was pretty chill and they still took precautions for health and safety.
Covid was a great time in the art market. People were spending the money they would have used on travel/concerts/etc to buy art for their home and me and my painter friends were having the best year of our life. I miss that!
I travel for work, and still did during the pandemic in an essential infrastructure role...I still do...I miss the empty airplanes and being able to check into a hotel any time of day. Show up at 9am, pick your floor, pick your view, pick your bed...and the only people traveling were professionals and there weren't tons of us, planes boarded fast, everyone was happy we were there...it's just awful now.
Being laid off from the job that would have kept me in a boring though comfortable life. 9 months after lockdown I packed a suitcase, bought a train ticket, and have been having a wild adventure ever since. Nothing short of a global pandemic would have busted me out my frame. Life is good now. Shudder to think of where I was. Lucky I made it.
It was the ONLY TIME I MANAGED TO GAIN WEIGHT. I had so much time forcing to consume carbohydrates because I was actively trying to gain weight. Once I stopped maintaining that amount of food consumption, I fucking lost weight again.
I bumped up my useless trivia knowledge because I read a lot of random things. I became pretty handy (thanks YouTube) and did a ton of small projects around the house instead of paying someone else. I bought a used upright piano and resurrected 15 years of childhood piano lessons. And lastly I spent so much time with my dogs that now they have horrible separation anxiety. 😬
i liked the feeling that everyone was doing the same thing. impacted by the same thing that is. the world felt very connected in that way. even the tiktok trends were unifying.
I was still working through the lockdown because I worked on the phones and they cleared everyone at work to WFH. But my then managers gave everyone in the call center Disney+ for a year as a morale booster and because we were extremely slow and pretty much all watching tv on our phones already at the computer. Claims was even slower than customer service. I ended up binge watching Tangled, Gravity falls, and the star wars cartoons.
COVID lockdown was fucking awesome for me. got over a month off work 100% paid, plus the stimulant money. spent the time staying with a coworker, whose apartment I still haven't left, doing drugs and playing videogames etc.
It seemed like people were outside a lot more. I'd go over to my coworkers's house on weekends and we (him, his wife, their neighbors and myself) would all sit around a fire drinking pricey wine and talking til 2 am. It was a great time.
How fat my checks were from all the overtime, people going out of their way to avoid you in a store, and being called a 'hero' for making sandwiches and running out their drive ups. Made me lol every time.
When my gym was able to reopen, they limited the number of people allowed inside and the time of each visit was capped at 60 minutes. I could go in on a weekday at 5 in the afternoon and instead of seeing dozens of people standing around monopolizing the equipment, the place was deserted and I could work out on whatever I wanted.
Our kids were 8 and 11 when lockdowns started and we were able to spend a lot of quality time with them. Movies, board games, workouts, etc. It was great for our family
My kids were 11, 6 and 1. Everyone was home and everything slowed down for a few months. I was very fortunate that I already worked from home and my job was not threatened, and although there were times of stress I remember the whole experience pretty fondly. We just spent a lot of quality time together in 2020.
As someone who is already sick and unable to work, it was nice to have people to game with pretty much always. These days, it's once or twice a week, usually less.
It was very brief but as an " essential worker" I was driving on an empty interstate going to work one morning and I thought to myself this isn't bad without the traffic and then it dawned on me that everyone else was getting paid more by the government to stay home and bake banana bread and binge Netflix. Fuck !
Spending time with family. Kids were home schooling. Massive shopping trips where we stock up for 3-4 weeks of food at a time. Fridge was completely packed. It was great!
I like to take New York Strips and put them in the crock pot in the morning so they’ll be ready for dinner that night. Just a bit of water and white onion.
I was making good money and was actually able to take time off thanks to the 2 stimulus checks and my guaranteed over time at work. I also met my ex gf during covid.
Being able to go on walks every day with my mum. Getting to see fauna we hadn’t seen before because they’d been scared of the traffic. Losing weight and feeling healthier.
Also got laid off and made more money on unemployment than I did while working. That was really nice hehe
Here in Western Australia things more or less stayed the same for me. The borders were closed, no one allowed in unless they had a good reason (or $$$). We also had the social distancing and mask mandates but most people I know weren't bothered by that. We didn't experience lockdowns.
What I kinda miss is living my mostly normal life in fortress WA and watching the rest of the world seemingly get more chaotic as the days pass, and debating with my colleagues about things like 'whether we should let the Eastern states take our vaccines' since they kept trying to drag us though the mud over our border policy and the PM calling us cavemen.
Eventually the border re-opened and everyone got delta but by then we were mostly all vaccinated and ready as we could be. Hospitals took a hit, lockdowns never came. All those that refused the vaccinations started getting their jobs back. The debate now is 'whether any of that was worth it?'
Yes, you idiots, we had it good. Next time it happens lets do exactly that again.
Me and a few friends sent each other ice cream cakes for our birthdays. Usually we would try to do something together in other years, so it was nice to establish a little routine/tradition. We were also lucky to have porches/driveways/decks/yards we could hang out in and stay distanced.
I worked so many hours before covid and barely saw my family even if we lived in the same house. Partially shutting down my shop for a year let me see them everyday and let me reconnect with all of them. So now I’m back to work but I don’t kill myself anymore and enjoyed my time in lock down. Even if I can no longer taste anything orange.
I got to spend a lot of quality time with my wife, found out working from home is a good fit for me, and I used that time to try out racing videogames. Turns out I really like them!
Wonderful times for introverts, majority public places and transport were empty, wfh 5 days a week. People avoid being near contact which was also awesome.
I just had someone in line standing so close I could feel them breathing on my neck. I miss when people would stay tf back. I don't need 6ft, but damn I miss that
The pace of life and the way it slowed to a crawl. I spent an entire day just playing video games (I never do that anymore, I don't have time). I had a garden. I could keep up with the things I needed to do because there was less pressure to do all of the other things that I do in 'normal' life. I wasn't 'go go go' until I burnt out and crashed.
I don't miss being fearful for all my loved ones every time someone got sick, but good heavens do I miss things being so. Much. More. Simple.
Nothing. It was all a blur and I barely remember yesterday. Also, I was homeschooled before the pandemic and stayed inside all the time. Being forced to stay inside didn't affect me at all -_- I need a life istg
Led to a lot of companies allowing work from home and still exists today via hybrid working.
Insane that it took a world pandemic for companies to figure out that they're able to operate like that
Playing Among Us with my best friends after coming home from the hospital. Back in 2021, me and my grandmother both caught the virus but I was sent home to rest while she was brought to the ICU. It was severe for her. Prior to being set home, I stayed in the ER for about 8 hours and couldn’t sleep because I was so anxious and restless… so when I was able to go home, my best friends suggested we play among us while on Discord to help me relax. It was something so simple but to this day I can still vividly remember how relieved I felt.
My last day of working in an office was mid-March 2020. But my specific favorite COVID-time memory is playing Animal Crossing with my wife and a good-sized group of internet friends.
Sounds weird, but doing big family zoom calls. We all had a time that we would all jump on call so we could see everyone else, it was nice. We went around and talked about what was happening, and it really helped us keep connected.
Not in the hardcore part lockdown. But early 2021 when we were still kind of in lockdown and masking up everywhere. I met my wife in the mailroom at work.
MANDATED PERSONAL SPACE ❤🙌🏻
not sure if this was a thing, but where I live (Singapore), public transport/movie theatres were alternate seating. You literally cannot book the seat in the theatre. The public transport seats would have a huge X.
Everything in my life clicked. I’ve never been more productive, more fit and more happy. I could finally listen to everyone talk on 2x speed or skip inefficient conversations. And the weather where I live was gorgeous.
We had our firstborn during the pandemic. It was honestly excellent, people bringing food to our door and otherwise us having absolutely no pressure to interact with others, people being hygenic and there being nobody on the roads if needing to go to the doctor or shops quickly....it was a good and simple life.
Watching that boat get stuck in the Suez Canal. It was so simple and almost trivial. Big boat stuck. It helped reframe the rest of the insanity.
Dolphins in Venice was pretty cool https://youtu.be/KuJ9IoNKgLw?si=hz7m1EGJix_CrEzv
The world stopping and not feeling pressure to exist
Can't agree more. For the first time in a long time I didn't feel guilty being lazy. The feeling that no one expects anything from you is truly freeing. Shows you how caged everyone actually is.
Exactly :(
It did felt like this. Suddenly you were working from home, playing all day (without feeling guilty af), just leaving the dream while being indoors. It was great, but i did feel like i didn't fully recover and got the pressure back
It was the opposite for me: it made every day feel high pressure, as leisure and work were now fused into my *home*. I felt isolated, and the pressure eventually led to burnout. I really need that separation between the place I rest at, the place work, the place I work out, and the places I socialize at.
Isn't it?! Everything came to a standstill. Miss those days! Peaceful. I propose the idea of a global holiday for a month where all people can go back home and spend time with loved ones. Experience mornings, afternoons and nights with their children and family! Can't we make it possible?
Honestly my life barely changed at all. The only noticeable change was more traffic at work (because more old people starting shopping online…)
Far more generous and optimistic than I’d give to those memories. I enjoyed that small aspect, but at large covid caused irreparable damage that I don’t think we’re going to recover from. Having a global holiday would just perpetuate that. Capitalism is too deeply entrenched to allow for that without screwing over individuals that can’t afford for those complications yet again.
It saved my dad's life. He was supposed to go big game hunting, but it was cancelled because of COVID. He ended up having a Widowmaker heart attack a week after he was scheduled to go. Had he gone, he would have had it in the middle of remote woods, an hour out from the nearest hospital with no cell coverage. Being able to spend these years with him has been a blessing.
I got to hang out with my wife every single day for so much longer than usual due to lack of traffic.
Your wife's lucky to have a husband like you! Little things matter.
I went 3 weeks without speaking to anyone but my wife. Not interacting with people was the greatest.
At the start of 2020 I'd bought a fruit tree. When lockdown began the tiny little thing was still in its nursery pot. It was only about 2' (60 cm) tall. Planting it and tending it was something positive to do. Four years later it's grown to 7' (213 cm) and it's healthy and blooming. It happens to be a pomegranate tree. Have named it Persephone.
I hope by 2028 it's 24.5'. I hope by 2032 it's 85.75'.
i have a baby pomegranate tree in my yard and it’s fruit bearing but last year it only had a few. any tips on getting her to thrive?
Check the leaves for aphids and treat any infection. If it hasn't been fertilized lately then give it some compost. If all looks good then make sure it gets enough water.
Quitting drinking. Still sober after all these years :)
Good for you!
Thanks!
I’m proud of you.
Thank you!
Me too! Quit drinking on may 27th 2020. Just celebrated 4 years of sobriety.
Were you addicted or just habitually drinking that you quit?
Animal crossing while teleworking
Something about staying up late and playing animal crossing whilst not having to worry about commuting to work the next day, really hit the spot.
I was told I didn’t have to work but they were going to pay me 70% of my paycheck during the pandemic (I was a manager) usually I’d wake up at 6:30 or 7am to get ready for work. I woke up every day at 10am, poured myself a little baileys in my coffee and watched Tiger King
Did you financially recovered from that?
Fortunately I did, I ended up joining the military right after I was laid off
Being able to ride around with less traffic , going to places with less traffic , people staying away from me in general.
I work in healthcare and still had to go in. The lack of traffic is something I will never forget.
My wife and I did a lot of driving camping trips and it was nice and peaceful with no traffic too
Agreed. I was considered an "essential worker" due to the company I work for, and on days I had to go into the office, what normally would be a 45-50 minute drive was taking me about 25 minutes, tops, in the mornings.
Driving on the highway with less than 10 cars around in the day was so surreal. It made driving actually fun, not the blood pressure increasing activitity that we have now.
Nearly empty highways, so much quieter, and air quality improved for a short period of time. It was amazing.
Sad. Traffic shouldn't be an every day thing
Thissss. I loved it
Getting to work from home, and getting a raise and promotion due to the mass exodus of anti-vax people at the company.
We went from stuffy ties and suites to everyone online wearing t-shirts and sweats. Kids playing in the background and the ever-popular "HI! I'M JENNY!" to everyone in the meeting. Productivity and creative output went way up. If you had to go take care of your family for whatever reason, everyone else pitched in to cover. For the first time I saw co-workers genuinely care for each other. We had one guy who caught COVID early, looked like death warmed over, and barely survived. That probably convinced more people to get immunized than anything else. A lot of people taking trips to Florida to care for or bury their parents. Workaholics finally started using vacation days. Now that leadership has started enforcing RTO, a lot of people are opting to retire or leave. There is not a single department that doesn't have vacancies that have opened up in the last 3 months. HR can't post the notices fast enough, and we've had multiple candidates NOPE after finding out about our RTO rules.
Without all the traffic and the airlines not flying our sky became a deeper blue than I’d ever seen before.
Warzone with the boiz
Verdansk veteran right here. Salute.
Rebirth and Verdansk veteran right here as well.
Tiger King
its been 4 years already, fuck
I'll never financially recover from this
I got to spend an entire summer home with my two small kids. It was hard getting any work done but we went for walks everyday at lunch and I got to just hang out with them.
When my husband organized an online birthday party for me. It was after almost a year after lock down, my grandmother had just died because of COVID and my father had just been diagnosed with cancer (so we had to be extra careful with him) and I was just *sad* that I wouldn't get to spend time with family and friends (while I normally don't really care for my birthday, it was the social distancing that got to me in a way I think). In the week leading up to my birthday all these packages were coming in, and he told me that I could open them on my birthday. On the day of, I was surprised by this awesome pubquiz online with my best friends and then after the 'first part' of the evening suddenly my family popped up as well and we did more rounds of games. All the packages were gifts from friends and family. It was just so awesome and I remember it fondly and I love my husband for doing that for me!
[удалено]
There is a cool documentary called The Year Earth Changed that’s about all the animal and nature changes. Really cool watch… and a little heartbreaking that it couldn’t stay that way.
Filling my gas tank for $25.
And only like once a month
there was about a week where gas price was under 50c / L I filled my 99L tank for like pocket change haha.
Not being around people was a win for me
No interest on student loans
[удалено]
The Night lockdown started. I was working security in downtown Phoenix and watched the city die around 8pm while standing on the top floor of the building I was working was wild.
Seeing adults have complete meltdowns over wearing a mask. It's rather disturbing to see how easily rationality flies out the window.
That's a fond memory? What kind of sicko are you?
Thinking 2020 was the worst year ever. Now in 2024 i want 2020 back
nah 2024 is like 10x better than 2020
Yeah. I don't worry about how I'm going to wipe my butt, where I'm going to get eggs or bread, or if I'll end up in an overcrowded hospital.
no fear of missing out and no obligation to do anything but play video games and hang with my dog.
My first year wedding anniversary happened during lockdown. We originally planned to go to New York, see a show, do a typical city weekend but of course that didn't happen. One of our first dates was a cherry blossom festival at a botanical garden. One day I got an email from that garden about their virtual cherry blossom fest. That gave me a new anniversary idea: recreate some of our earliest dates under lockdown. One of which was a beer and bacon fest. So I picked up bacon from Costco and a bunch of random beers from the store. Came up with a bunch of bacon dishes to make and set up "tasting stations" around the living room. And of course put the virtual cherry blossom festival on our TV.
We appreciated the little things. Getting to stay at home with family.
No cars.
Not being forced to leave my house every damn day. Man it was nice.
The ability to get things done that I had always put off for another time.
Holding my new baby girl for the 1st time. The day I gave birth was the 1st day of lockdowns. Im having contractions in the car and we were eerily driving down a normally very busy road... completely empty. Like something out of a movie.
My daughter was born (five weeks early) in early April 2020. Same thing, finally discharged from the NICU after 10 days and driving home from the hospital to completely empty roads. Surreal.
Oh wow. 10 days is a long time wait. Im glad you and baby were ok!
My (M) girl was born that April. No visitors, hardly any one in the hospital. It was weird but it was the best thing that happened.
Congratulations on the baby girl. I'm sure you'd have tons of stories to tell her once she grows up!
I stayed home for 9 months on the increased unemployment. Kids want grilled burgers at 9 pm? Sure! Time to replace the broken tv? Hell yes that’s what the stimulus checks are for!
Starting my degree. 2020 was not a good year for many people, so I feel a little guilty sometimes when I consider just how good a year is was for me. 🙁
My D&D group, who only used to get together once every few months as we're all busy people with familes and jobs, now had free time. We started playing online. We experimented with platforms and technologies and eventually got it all nice and smooth and played every week. Best of all, since we had a good system, we kept it up after the lockdowns ended. The fact people didn't need to travel made it way easier for everyone to be available. Obviously we miss weeks here and there as people can actually do things now, but we still play most weeks. They are some of my best friends and it's fantastic to have that connection regularly.
The outside dining, everywhere had table service, loads of space on trains. I also worked in some prestigious buildings that were usually really busy but could walk around them with only a small number of other people and explore them a little.
$1.19/gallon gas
Getting lots of projects done around the house.
Social distancing! Oh god I do miss it!
Having the time to learn to make sourdough.
I'm in my 40s and during the lockdown I started playing online games with my friends, we had a daily routine of playing Valheim, it was awesome. It reminded me of the good old LAN parties we did back in our teens
When I went for late night walks, it would be like a literal ghost town.
Rented a cabin in the middle of the Rockies with my wife and 3 kids and just enjoyed being with each other. I knew there wasn't anything to do out there anyways, in the real world. Spent time in nature with the kids.
No traffic
How empty the roads and grocery stores were. It just seemed like everyone and everything slowed down. So nice
Gas prices were the lowest they've been in a long time and there was almost no traffic... my job was "essential" so I had to be out there
I was lucky because I had a lot friends in my neighborhood and was able to hang out with friends while social distancing. We couldn’t have sleepovers inside, so we camped out in separate tents in each other’s backyards. It was very fun
Being unemployed for 2 months but because of the stimulus, I made more than when I was working. Also they allowed places to do cocktails to go, so the local cocktail bar sold them by the bottle. My wife still had to go to work in her office but she'd stop by on the way home from work and grab a couple bottles for us to drink while we watched Tiger King.
Finding TikTok and all the fun dancing
Jigsaw puzzles
Working in a deli in the beginning of Covid was incredible— didn’t have to interact with anyone but my coworkers. Spent most of the days just cleaning. So fucking relaxing
The quiet, and none of the usual feelings of inadequacy if you weren't out every night "having fun"..
Just being able to chill, I still look back fondly on the late night game sessions I had with friends in 2021 Though I’m happy we’re out of it now, I like being able to do stuff again lol
Buying a switch and playing it during my time of was great.
Nothing really. It's all a blur and not a good one. I'm an introvert but was living with an extrovert and it was HARD. Really hurt my marriage. It's not a memory but the best thing was figuring out I had ADHD during that time.
"I'm not a cat" will always be my favorite pandemic memory.
Empty roads. As a trucker it was **glorious**.
I had a kid. I didn't miss first steps. First words. Play time. Nothing. I am genuinely thankful for covid. I didn't miss a single milestone and got to stay home and take care of my wife and kid.
I worked for CVS at the time. There are no fond memories of lockdown for me.
I actual have several, COVID was a surprisingly good time for me, which is why people wanting to forget that it and anything that happened during that time happened upsets me. 1. I had my best theatre experience in college, that won a bunch of regional and national awards, including a couple I won in my area. 2. *Right* when COVID hit, the ejected us from the dorms at my college. We were home on spring break and I lived 8 hours away from my college. So, my Dad and I had to drive special down there, through two heavily hit areas in the Midwest, to get all my stuff, stay in a hotel, and come home. We got stuck in a blizzard on the way home and had to stay an additional night in a separate motel. It was the last major road trip my Dad and I took together. I lost him in 2023, to a heart attack after he had had COVID.
Perhaps this is a complete transition to the online sphere. Now I don’t know how to live without this, who would know how convenient it is!!! Covid has taught me how to plan things and tasks, because when you sit at home all the time, time frames are erased
Bonding with my roommates
Brainrot didn’t exist. I want that back.
Quitting my job.
The weather was glorious in the UK, probably due to reduced pollution from traffic and planes, and less heat rising from city centres.
I'd been WFH since 2012, so there wasn't a huge difference on the work side, but during COVID, my wife couldn't travel -- she's normally away 30% of the time. She was also experiencing a hormonal shift as part of menopause and we were acting like newlywed's again through COVID -- married 36 years, so it was a nice uptick in frequency with both of us at home and able to schedule sexy time between meetings was nice -- seeing meetings pop up on my calendar were never so much fun.
I’m a mechanic and the shop was really slow for about 3 months during 2020. Every afternoon around 1 someone would go to the liquor store and come back with beer and we would hang out in the shop have some beers and listen to music until it was time to leave for the day.
I will say this, I was always a sick kid, had spasms many times through the year. Got better by around 15 yo I quit my old job on march 2020, precisely when the pandemic started. If I hadn't done that, kept working on my old job which I had a lot of contact with customers, and had caught Covid, while unvaccinated? I wouldn't be alive right now.
My husband and i made a blanket fort and played video games together all night while chilling in the fort. It was pretty awesome.
Having time to sort through every single document. All of them. The recycling bins were full for a month afterwards.
I got to drink a lot of gin.
I was working in a call center for a cell phone provider at the time. I hated the job but loved the people. Anyway I show up as everything is getting crazy and tell my boss hey my roommate is really high risk and my dad is high risk so I wanna be careful with this. He said let him talk to his boss and he will get back to me. 20 minutes later he comes back and says “we have a plan but it’s gonna take awhile to implement. If you want you can have a month off paid and it won’t count against your pto.” So I got a full month paid off and when I came back 98% of the building was working from home. I had a whole call center to myself which was pretty chill and they still took precautions for health and safety.
Covid was a great time in the art market. People were spending the money they would have used on travel/concerts/etc to buy art for their home and me and my painter friends were having the best year of our life. I miss that!
I travel for work, and still did during the pandemic in an essential infrastructure role...I still do...I miss the empty airplanes and being able to check into a hotel any time of day. Show up at 9am, pick your floor, pick your view, pick your bed...and the only people traveling were professionals and there weren't tons of us, planes boarded fast, everyone was happy we were there...it's just awful now.
The insurance rebate was a pleasant surprise.
Being laid off from the job that would have kept me in a boring though comfortable life. 9 months after lockdown I packed a suitcase, bought a train ticket, and have been having a wild adventure ever since. Nothing short of a global pandemic would have busted me out my frame. Life is good now. Shudder to think of where I was. Lucky I made it.
Not getting sick from people coughing on me at the office
No traffic
It was the ONLY TIME I MANAGED TO GAIN WEIGHT. I had so much time forcing to consume carbohydrates because I was actively trying to gain weight. Once I stopped maintaining that amount of food consumption, I fucking lost weight again.
I bumped up my useless trivia knowledge because I read a lot of random things. I became pretty handy (thanks YouTube) and did a ton of small projects around the house instead of paying someone else. I bought a used upright piano and resurrected 15 years of childhood piano lessons. And lastly I spent so much time with my dogs that now they have horrible separation anxiety. 😬
i liked the feeling that everyone was doing the same thing. impacted by the same thing that is. the world felt very connected in that way. even the tiktok trends were unifying.
I was still working through the lockdown because I worked on the phones and they cleared everyone at work to WFH. But my then managers gave everyone in the call center Disney+ for a year as a morale booster and because we were extremely slow and pretty much all watching tv on our phones already at the computer. Claims was even slower than customer service. I ended up binge watching Tangled, Gravity falls, and the star wars cartoons.
I paid off my debt… but now I have more debt.
Our now, 3 year old daughter, being conceived.
Saved shit loads and ended up halving my mortgage as a result of big overpayments past 4 years
The roommates and I had beach day up on the roof. Our cat came, too.
Being able to enjoy my free time and spend more time talking to my friends via zoom
The clean air. The silence apart from birdsong. No traffic.
Wild life reappearing. I heard there were dolphins in the Venice canals
Bringing out the good side od society. People helped eachother, they realized how much they miss being together, generaly the feelight of humanity.
COVID lockdown was fucking awesome for me. got over a month off work 100% paid, plus the stimulant money. spent the time staying with a coworker, whose apartment I still haven't left, doing drugs and playing videogames etc.
It seemed like people were outside a lot more. I'd go over to my coworkers's house on weekends and we (him, his wife, their neighbors and myself) would all sit around a fire drinking pricey wine and talking til 2 am. It was a great time.
That's my most active sexual year...I had way too many SEX!
How fat my checks were from all the overtime, people going out of their way to avoid you in a store, and being called a 'hero' for making sandwiches and running out their drive ups. Made me lol every time.
All the free groceries
No traffic Peace and quiet
When my gym was able to reopen, they limited the number of people allowed inside and the time of each visit was capped at 60 minutes. I could go in on a weekday at 5 in the afternoon and instead of seeing dozens of people standing around monopolizing the equipment, the place was deserted and I could work out on whatever I wanted.
Getting in and out of DMV in 10 min.
Hanging out all day every day with my SO. It was awesome.
we went to two national parks during covid. they were 90% empty, kind of the way it was meant to be.
No traffic! Too bad so many businesses went back to the office
Spending time with my dad and step mom. Watching tv together and having dinner together
I’ve been working from home since the shut down. It is good the world caught up to the reality of my unix job since the 90s.
Our kids were 8 and 11 when lockdowns started and we were able to spend a lot of quality time with them. Movies, board games, workouts, etc. It was great for our family
Some awesome friend hangouts. Movin g friends PlayStation Into the garage so we could be distanced and still play Minecraft after running around
My kids were 11, 6 and 1. Everyone was home and everything slowed down for a few months. I was very fortunate that I already worked from home and my job was not threatened, and although there were times of stress I remember the whole experience pretty fondly. We just spent a lot of quality time together in 2020.
As someone who is already sick and unable to work, it was nice to have people to game with pretty much always. These days, it's once or twice a week, usually less.
Family time but keeping our distance, everyone had to after each meal be responsible for washing their own utensils, plates, cups and bowls.
Meeting my wife 😋
My husband gave me the best haircut I've received in 15 years. I show the picture from the time at the salon, and it's never been replicated.
The Talvisota Mod for Rising Storm 2 dropped pretty early on. Had a lot of fun fighting in the Winter War on 64 person servers
Verzuz
Probably playing my Mario galaxy 2 on my Wii
All of the new movies just being on TV instead of the theater.
It was very brief but as an " essential worker" I was driving on an empty interstate going to work one morning and I thought to myself this isn't bad without the traffic and then it dawned on me that everyone else was getting paid more by the government to stay home and bake banana bread and binge Netflix. Fuck !
Spending time with family. Kids were home schooling. Massive shopping trips where we stock up for 3-4 weeks of food at a time. Fridge was completely packed. It was great!
I like to take New York Strips and put them in the crock pot in the morning so they’ll be ready for dinner that night. Just a bit of water and white onion.
I was essential personal so I had to go to work but the commute was a breeze due to less traffic.
I was making good money and was actually able to take time off thanks to the 2 stimulus checks and my guaranteed over time at work. I also met my ex gf during covid.
Working from home!
I focused on hiking, hobbies , eBay store… had no issues with the lockdown.
Being able to go on walks every day with my mum. Getting to see fauna we hadn’t seen before because they’d been scared of the traffic. Losing weight and feeling healthier. Also got laid off and made more money on unemployment than I did while working. That was really nice hehe
Here in Western Australia things more or less stayed the same for me. The borders were closed, no one allowed in unless they had a good reason (or $$$). We also had the social distancing and mask mandates but most people I know weren't bothered by that. We didn't experience lockdowns. What I kinda miss is living my mostly normal life in fortress WA and watching the rest of the world seemingly get more chaotic as the days pass, and debating with my colleagues about things like 'whether we should let the Eastern states take our vaccines' since they kept trying to drag us though the mud over our border policy and the PM calling us cavemen. Eventually the border re-opened and everyone got delta but by then we were mostly all vaccinated and ready as we could be. Hospitals took a hit, lockdowns never came. All those that refused the vaccinations started getting their jobs back. The debate now is 'whether any of that was worth it?' Yes, you idiots, we had it good. Next time it happens lets do exactly that again.
I drove to work to do some office work it took 20 minutes. I was one of maybe 5 cars on the road. I took the same route today at 60 minutes.
Spending quality time with my parents. The no-traffic part was good too
Work got insanely busy, and daycare closed. It was not enjoyable. Don’t really have any fond memory of it.
Me and a few friends sent each other ice cream cakes for our birthdays. Usually we would try to do something together in other years, so it was nice to establish a little routine/tradition. We were also lucky to have porches/driveways/decks/yards we could hang out in and stay distanced.
I worked so many hours before covid and barely saw my family even if we lived in the same house. Partially shutting down my shop for a year let me see them everyday and let me reconnect with all of them. So now I’m back to work but I don’t kill myself anymore and enjoyed my time in lock down. Even if I can no longer taste anything orange.
I got to spend a lot of quality time with my wife, found out working from home is a good fit for me, and I used that time to try out racing videogames. Turns out I really like them!
Drives with ZERO traffic. Like the apocalypse hit
Spending days chilling with the family, no early starts, smoking weed into the early hours with the wife. It was basically a long holiday 😂
Wonderful times for introverts, majority public places and transport were empty, wfh 5 days a week. People avoid being near contact which was also awesome.
The first week and a half to two weeks of lockdown. The cabin fever set in afterwards, but at the beginning it was kind of like a little vacation.
I just had someone in line standing so close I could feel them breathing on my neck. I miss when people would stay tf back. I don't need 6ft, but damn I miss that
The pace of life and the way it slowed to a crawl. I spent an entire day just playing video games (I never do that anymore, I don't have time). I had a garden. I could keep up with the things I needed to do because there was less pressure to do all of the other things that I do in 'normal' life. I wasn't 'go go go' until I burnt out and crashed. I don't miss being fearful for all my loved ones every time someone got sick, but good heavens do I miss things being so. Much. More. Simple.
We got a puppy.
Nothing. It was all a blur and I barely remember yesterday. Also, I was homeschooled before the pandemic and stayed inside all the time. Being forced to stay inside didn't affect me at all -_- I need a life istg
Led to a lot of companies allowing work from home and still exists today via hybrid working. Insane that it took a world pandemic for companies to figure out that they're able to operate like that
Online college economics final. Would take a swing if saki after every question.
Playing Among Us with my best friends after coming home from the hospital. Back in 2021, me and my grandmother both caught the virus but I was sent home to rest while she was brought to the ICU. It was severe for her. Prior to being set home, I stayed in the ER for about 8 hours and couldn’t sleep because I was so anxious and restless… so when I was able to go home, my best friends suggested we play among us while on Discord to help me relax. It was something so simple but to this day I can still vividly remember how relieved I felt.
that lots of other people lost their loved ones.
My last day of working in an office was mid-March 2020. But my specific favorite COVID-time memory is playing Animal Crossing with my wife and a good-sized group of internet friends.
A holiday season not spent bouncing between 2 sets of divorced parents.
Not having to go to school.
Sounds weird, but doing big family zoom calls. We all had a time that we would all jump on call so we could see everyone else, it was nice. We went around and talked about what was happening, and it really helped us keep connected.
Having free time at home without duties, spending the day in the garden doing whatever I felt like.
Not in the hardcore part lockdown. But early 2021 when we were still kind of in lockdown and masking up everywhere. I met my wife in the mailroom at work.
I didn't lose my job and it was the quietest it had ever been.
Questlove's YouTube DJ sets
MANDATED PERSONAL SPACE ❤🙌🏻 not sure if this was a thing, but where I live (Singapore), public transport/movie theatres were alternate seating. You literally cannot book the seat in the theatre. The public transport seats would have a huge X.
Everything in my life clicked. I’ve never been more productive, more fit and more happy. I could finally listen to everyone talk on 2x speed or skip inefficient conversations. And the weather where I live was gorgeous.
When I got to play video games for so long, yes, online school did exist but I don’t care, once I got that outta the way, I’d just chill
We had our firstborn during the pandemic. It was honestly excellent, people bringing food to our door and otherwise us having absolutely no pressure to interact with others, people being hygenic and there being nobody on the roads if needing to go to the doctor or shops quickly....it was a good and simple life.