I know this is a guest service/customer service consulting website, but while a lot of the world is pressing pause, this is my new outlet for thoughts. Creating websites is not my thing and the idea of creating a new one hurts my head, but who knows with all this time, I may and probably will. I’m also avoiding the bathroom caulk a story for another day. I have some thoughts I’d like to share. You can read if you’d like, you can scroll on by, either way is fine. I’ll be sharing on a somewhat regular basis.
So here goes. Bare with me, this is stream of thought, no editing, just raw thoughts.
We are living in uncertain times, in unchartered waters, but we are resilient. I’ve heard it enough; I know I’m tired of hearing the buzzwords and phrases it’s like Groundhog Day with the words. Yep, it’s a new world, we’ll get through this, we get it. But guess what, no one is bombing us; no one is picking us up by the busload to take us to a camp and incinerate us. There are generations before us that lived much worse, with no technology, with shortages, living in pure fear because there was nothing they could do. We are in this together, as a global society and there is so much we can do. STAY HOME! Covid-19 does not discriminate, I could have it, I could be a carrier; it doesn’t matter your age, your ethnicity, your sex, anyone can contract the virus. Are some more susceptible than others, you betcha! But we can fight this and help our medical professionals by STAYING HOME.
Here’s what’s scary, I don’t want to get in a political debate, and I won’t debate it. The virus has been reported on since December/January. We knew it existed. We live in a much smaller world now than we did live in 10 years ago. Travel is easy we can go wherever we want, by plane, train, automobile or boat. Sometimes, all four. The fact we thought our news was making a story out of nothing was ignorant. That some news outlets called it a hoax, and the world is flat and the moon landing was in a TV studio. (Then why do we have a new military branch The Space Force) I’m not an expert but I have to imagine the virus has been here awhile. Based on things I’ve read we’ll be able to figure that out by backtracking, but that’s not something to dwell on now.
The only time I’m a panicked paranoid person is when I’m going to miss the beginning of a movie, I hate being late movies, musicals, concerts, plays, first pitch, puck drop, the coin toss. I have to see it all! I’m still not panicked, but I am prepared. Last week on Monday, I bought my food for the freezer. I have cleaning supplies and soap because I’m not filthy; I had toilet paper because well I do get the Costco pack twice a year. I’m still good on the first round. Unneeded panic ensued, because a lack of leadership assuring us our paper product supply is fine, our food supply is fine. Just think three weeks ago we were laughing at Australians for buying up all the toilet paper, and here we are doing the same thing. What’s sad, going to the grocery store, there’s no paper product but there’s a ton of fresh fruits and veggies. So had we been paying attention to those news outlets, they showed us basic supplies, food, paper products continued to remain stocked, even in lockdown, people could go to the grocery store or pharmacy. The essentials, the essentials were and are still available.
On the first day of my 9th grade Western Civilization class, my teacher Mr. Farro (I hope I spelled that right) he explained history and how it works. There are multiple theories on how to learn from theory. I only remember one, the spiral theory, learn from the past, educate your self in the now and move forward continually learning from past mistakes and past successes. I use this theory every single day. When I ran events, I thought about what worked, what didn’t, when I did staff training, how long is too long, what can we add to make it better, answering guest questions, there’s always a better way to find the best clarity for a guest, when I bake cookies and the next batch needs two more minutes I learn from the past and spiral forward.
So that leads me to how we’ve been responding. Did we learn from how China, South Korea, Italy responded to this pandemic? Italy has been warning us for weeks, the videos and China were showing us a new reality. (If anyone for any minute think a virus can be contained in a province of over 11 million people, you’ve never worked in a school with less than 300 people, where colds spread like wild fire, those kids come home and the whole house is sick for a week. Its science folks, plain and simple) back to my point, we had countries showing us their reality, preparing us for this mess and we had a government ignore it. I applaud the news outlets that covered this virus to keep it in the forefront of the news. Being smart, being educated, learning from history and making informed decisions, the spiral theory. China closed down they waited too long. Italy closed down they waited to long. The U. S. knew this was going on they were being warned by these government officials, the World Health Organization, the CDC and we ignored those warnings. History is something that happened in the past, China, Italy happened in the past, but we didn’t learn.
I applaud our Governors who started closing schools and public gathering places, to Colleges and Universities who saw the outbreaks in Washington and took action going to online classes. They are looking at the situation and are ahead of the Federal Government in their actions. I applaud the governors of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, they got together and said we have to do this together, if one of us closes bars and restaurants, our residents can just go across the boarder, so what’s the point? I applaud you. For Governor Newsom, you shutdown California! No big feat and I’m sure hard to enforce, but you are doing something. You’ve projected 58% of Californians will be infected. That’s half of every household. Also, this was a projection as of Thursday. You know the best thing about a projection? They can change. Just take a look at Democratic polling for the Presidential nominee. Projections can change, and if you project 58%, you lockdown your residents, the reality can be less. Math and science friends, math and science. Oh and listening skills, which we learn in elementary schools, (but I feel many parents are learning the reality of the classroom imagine your kids and a room of 20 others just like them). I know the U.S. is behind in these subjects, but we can be better, we are better educated that how we are acting. (Gen Z and Governor Scott of Florida, I’m looking at you, but will address you at a later time).
I just want us to marinate with our new reality and how we can be better. We can flatten the curve we’re a little late, but we still can. It will probably be more than 14 days; I’m in my personal day 8 of self-quarantine and social distancing. I’m so finding a new phrase for that. I’m sure you’ve figured it out, I’d rather do more and cut the numbers so we can say we did all that for nothing. No we did all that for a whole lot of something.
In the upcoming days I’ll continue to blog. I hope you read. I have lots of thoughts and like many of you I too need an outlet. And if anyone can virtually remove caulk from a bathtub shower, please do. I’m sure one of these blogs will be about my trials and errors in home improvement. Thanks for reading and I’ll write for you and for me, tomorrow.
Back to the caulk removal.
I really need to work on a catch phrase
Jill