Things I learned while in Quarantine

I’m going back to my life tomorrow. I’m a bit stressed because even though the health authorities have informed me that I can, should, and have to back to work, my self-tests are still coming up positive. I’ll do another before leaving in the morning, but I’m worried about passing COVID on to someone. They’ve reassured me that I won’t, but it’s still a bit nerve wracking. It means there is still evidence that my immune system was fighting the virus, and I don’t know how long that shows up after all the work is done.

I didn’t get nearly as much done as I thought I would, partly because in addition to needed to quarantine, I was actually sick and wanted to sleep all the time. I did get some things done, mostly working on my German homework (where I was pretty efficient), and putting things on line for my students. I worked almost a full day on the senior trip for my students, came up with ideas, and made a presentation video for them to look at, and sent them an online questionnaire to get feedback. They seem to be ok with my ideas, or not full-on against them.

In any case, I learned a few things: 1) I cannot stay inside on a beautiful day. I managed go out and hide myself away in the hills and had no more contact with people than I would have in my apartment, but it was important for me to see and feel the sun. 2) I’m more social than I like to let on. I really did look for contact with people after about four days. I had a video call with my sister, but the first thing I did when out of quarantine was call up my neighbors to go for a walk. 3) I can totally keep myself busy with interesting things, learning and reading and writing without doing anything for work. I don’t need my job to keep me busy. My job just makes more overly busy.

I have an Arduino to play with and didn’t do anything with that, but I have on-line conferences all day tomorrow and that would go well together.

I wish my self-test was negative! I’ve decided to keep testing before I go to work and if I’m still testing positive after, say, four weeks, I’ll go back for a PCR.

Foro has been a great companion in all this. At least I always have someone to talk to.