Wow, has time flown by or what? The past couple of years has been quite interesting, to say the least. I posted the 2019 Recap without much detail just to try out WordPress in its latest versioning and found the upgrades to be awesome, especially when looking for a simple way to blog and post on the go. So what has life for me been like during the pandemic? Read on to find out.
March 2020 – The start of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Little did we know when we boarded our Christmas Cruise in 2019 (or only heard rumors of) a little-known virus that was growing out of control rapidly in the APAC area and in Europe. A dear friend who was living in China was posting updates, and I kept thinking to myself, “This seems to be a little out of control, what will happen if the virus makes it to the US?”. We didn’t have long to obtain an answer to this question.
By my birthday in March – the virus was raging in the US and by the end of my birthday week – we were in lockdown. Now for those who know or haven’t taken the time to view my documentary – Queer Knitter In The Queen City – my day job is supporting IT Operations for my company. My group (then) supports all of our web development for the various sites and products we maintain and sell. I recall going out on my actual birthday for a couple of drinks celebrating that I have actually made it another year and everyone was jokingly saying “Stay 6ft away from me – COVID!” and little did some of these folks realize that week we would be under a state-wide mandated lockdown. I recall telling my boss then, “I bet by the end of this week, we will be sent home. We need to prepare.”, which is exactly what we ended up doing. I began looking at our stockpile of used, but still in working order laptops and started sending them out to various groups who were not prepared to begin working from home. My team quickly spun up the necessary tools we needed so we could continue on with our work from our homes.
New Year 2020 – What was going on…
Now leading up to the wonderful world of lockdown (queue the Wonderful World of Disney theme here) I also had quite a bit of personal things going on. My medical journey began with a three-day in-patient EEG study to see if I had epilepsy or some other seizure disorder, and we also were dealing with a family member who had a fall, ended up in a coma, and was on a ventilator in ICU for about a month before heading to rehabilitation then coming to live with us.
During my little visit, trying to find out what has been causing my nervous system to freak out and exaggerate; of course, this ended up being a dead-end. However, it did lead us to some additional clues as to what actually might be happening. Remember the little (okay long) post about 2018/2019? That sneaky little brain tumor appears to be causing more trouble than originally thought.
2020 rolls right along…
Not all of 2020 was bad – it certainly presented its challenges but also new opportunities and deeper friendships I will forever hold dear. Mom & I nursed my aunt back to health and she was able to go back and live at her place. Now less than a week after that – BOOM! – My sister and brother came to live at Chez Chaos. So now it is like we are back in the 90’s – sans my father living as a family and doing pretty well.
During the summer, the community lost a great LGBT leader. I was lucky enough to know Dan Mauney for over 20 years. His death was very hard and even harder still as we had forged a friendship that I will always cherish. Dan pushed me to be my absolute best self and challenged me every day. I will do miss his uncanny way of wishing you a happy birthday by texting one letter at a time.
Dan is on the far right.
By mid-2020 I lost one of the best bosses a person could have. My awesome boss was laid off during the pandemic and I will admit it shattered me and others in my group. Fortunately, we have built a solid friendship and still talk once a month or so. Fast forward to Dec 2020 and I had been shuffled to a new group and my 3rd management change.
The rest of 2020 flew by it seems. I launched a new support system at work, became a call center system developer, regained my Salesforce certification, and charged through as best as I could. I even managed to get in a mini-vacation to Asheville with good friends for tubing on the river.
The rest of 2020 was spent working, knitting, and getting out of the house when I could. The only thing missing was a cruise!
DaveyKnits! 