a year of sharing

I came up to the one year anniversay of working from home during a pandemic a few weeks ago. About two thirds of that last year was spent in 'hard lockdown', including a 112 day stretch where there was a night curfew, and leaving the house could only be done for grocery shopping, caring/medical reasons, an hour of exercise (all within 5km of home) or essential work.  The idea of personal bubbles came about half way through that stretch of time but otherwise people living alone only had pets to keep them company.  For all the Skype, Zoom and Teams virtual calls and meetings are just not the same when it comes to connecting. Nothing beats a real hug from a real person.

I got into the habit during this time of daily virtual check-ins with my team - complemented by an almost daily email reporting on priorities, sharing how I was feeling, and random 'offerings' - the latter ranging from light entertainment, humorous material, and educational pieces. It was a way of practicing my writing skills, particularly during periods where my creative writing efforts was in hiatus.  There were large stretches in the last 12 months where the procrastination consumed me so there was a lot of random offerings found during those periods of doomscrolling.  

In contrast, I kept most of my social media feeds content 'light weight' - with the bulk of the limited postings photographs from my daily walks.  I took a lot of photos of flowers and bees.  I also wrote and published three pieces of poetry during the last 12 months on my Medium page (Cristina Archer – Medium), two of which bookended the year as reflections on the pandemic, and one was a piece reflecting on grief on the anniversary of the passing of my mother.  The year gone and largely confined to home seemed to amplify those feelings.

Looking back over the almost daily emails, over 70 pages and some 25,000 words, I have been surprised by the depth of my year of sharing. I asked a few times, more frequently as restrictions started to ease, whether the team still wanted this product. I was equally surprised by the feedback - quite a few in the team looked forward to receiving it, enjoyed reading it, were delighted by my streaming suggestions, laughed many times out loud at the cheeky material contained in the content, and appreciated my willingness to articulate the emotions they were all feeling about our year of living aimlessly.  

Some of the feelings content of those emails has been reproduced as part of my written blogs about "notes on existential threats" - a little chicken and egg - see last few postings on this blog. As a writer, I am relaxed about germinating ideas in one communication channel and refining it in others. Some of my poetry finds its way into paragraphs in my novels, and vice-versa.  To complete the picture, I have now extracted some lighter highlights from the daily reporting emails in the reproduced material below:

• I was trying to explain the concept of risk/likelihood consequences to my older brother – a staple of risk management 101 – and eventually decided to send him the picture below.

• Reproducing the chart shared at the team meeting – because it’s the long weekend ahead of us and if you are heading out and about, please take care with your physical distancing.

• A play on one of my favourite collective nouns (see below).

• A sign from Montreal. I was perplexed about what behaviour it was trying to target. Any thoughts?

• Taking the quintessential weather conditions measure we’ve seen on many a travelling road and replacing the terminology to measure anxiety levels. Not mine – as in no circumstances would I EVER kick the cat so I’m replacing that measure on the dial with pillow fight.

• A bit of Escher in construction.

• Some pig Latin.
  

• A way of explaining virus transmission to anyone.

• The amusement park in the picture is more my pace these days…

• Personally, I would rank ferrets closer to cats on the scale. Thoughts?

  
  
  

• Given the egg is NOT over-easy, I think the lever choice is obvious. No prizes for guessing I think the image is a metaphorical illustration of 2020.
  

I am writing this blog in Lockdown 4.0 here in Melbourne. I hope to be able to travel at least 25km from my home by week's end.