I was living on my own, but I locked down on 9 March. From when my SO had to leave the country on 21 March, to when I was kicked out of the country in Jan, the only person I had physical contact with was one hug on 20 September. The friend was on day 14 of her own quarantine. And when I finished the quarantine in the old/new country in Feb, that was the first time someone had seen my face in person since my SO.
I got my first ever car in Jan 2020 because I didn’t want to risk public transport. I bought lots of food and masks etc. I convinced my workplace to let everyone work from home if they wanted to (me!) a couple of weeks before the government lockdown. The last restaurant I went to was March 8 2020.
The major factors in my opinion were:
I don’t want to kill anyone by mistake, and most of the old people weren’t wearing masks properly. (And my literal next door neighbours were a very old couple who also didn’t wear their masks properly).
I don’t want long covid. If I get sick, I’m on my own. I lived alone, and I had zero family in the country. There would be nobody who would be able to help me if something happened. And my building had no elevator, so I’d need to climb up four flights of stairs while being out of breath for however long it took to convalesce.
Most people around me weren’t taking adequate precautions. I know many people who got COVID, but nobody who died from it.
Some differences from mingyuan:
I was okay with outdoors (in a forest) meetings with one (or possibly two) other people. That being said, that only happened a total of three times.
I was okay with going to further places (I finally had a car!), so long as I was away from people. I did a few same-day solo road trips (packed my own lunch and ate in the car), and lots of exploration (and virtual dates with my SO).
I did interact with others (e.g., groceries and some necessities.)
Some similarities:
When things started to open up (e.g., in the summer), people threw caution to the wind. Government allowed e.g. up to 10 people to meet in restaurants etc, so these were definitely out. People wouldn’t wear masks when outdoors even in large groups.
I did end up expanding my network of Rats (online) and learning a lot of things, though.
Right now, I’m staying with my younger sister, and she’s vaccinated because of her work, so yay. There’s a visa application in progress to see if I can return to the previous country, but when I go will depend on how accessible vaccinations are here vs there.
For now, I’m satisfied with what I did, and I think it was reasonable all things considered. One concern I have in the long term is that seeing crowds and unmasked people gets a visceral reaction, including e.g. in old movies. I’ll need to retrain myself, because I don’t want to end up with agoraphobia.
God, life would have been so much better if I could drive. I could have gone home to my family. I could have done so many things! But extremely unfortunately I spent 2019 and the latter half of 2018 cultivating a pathological fear of cars, and specifically me driving them. Agh.
Anyway I’m glad you’re satisfied with what you did, that’s really good! Definitely watch out for that agoraphobia – I’ve heard a lot of people express that same sentiment and I sincerely hope we don’t all end up socially crippled for the rest of time. Do you ever have those totally normal dreams where you’re.… doing anything at all.… and then you realize that no one is wearing masks and why are you so close to them? Alas.
Did you cultivate the fear of cars on purpose? Why? Did you use to be able to drive before?
I got my license in 2010, but didn’t really drive until Feb last year. It took me a month to start the car up. It took me another 3 months to get on a highway, and 4 months after that until I was comfortable going on longer trips. Obviously COVID, so I had to teach myself for the most part. And I’m still relying on certain automations (e.g., sensors to make sure I don’t destroy things while backing up, adaptive cruise control to control my speed and distance, etc.) I’m not sure I would be able to drive something while controlling the speed with my foot.
Two tools I found extremely useful were my dashcam (front and rear) and Google Street View. At the start, I’d spend about 3 hours for each planned hour of trip reviewing the route on Street View, finding the different signs at each point and how the intersections were arranged, seeing what they look like from above, etc. And then after the trip I rewatched the entire thing to see my mistakes (and there were plenty of mistakes) and get advice (COVID, so I sent clips to friends and family who I think drive well).
Nowadays (or rather, until I left it in my previous country of residence), I do most of my planning with the Google Maps routing tool. I take a look at it with the satellite view, and use street view where I think it might be easy to get confused (e.g., multiple tight turns after each other, where the GPS might be delayed.) That takes me about 10 minutes per hour of driving (less for highway-heavy trips). For the highway, I review the exit names I should look out for whenever there’s a split or a merge or I need to take a certain lane. After the trip, I do a review for longer trips, but I batch the shorter ones (e.g., groceries) and do that once a month or so.
Back in Feb, I couldn’t even stay in lane. I’m still not quite satisfied with my spatial awareness of the size of my car, but I can offload it to the car, so that’s okay. That being said, I’m a much safer driver compared to before, I’m much better at anticipating things that would happen 5 to 10 seconds before they happen. I’ve had many highway trips where I don’t need to touch the accelerator or the brakes at all.
Another tip is to get things that increase your safety, such as blind spot mirrors if you don’t have them, hydrophilic coating for the mirrors, and hydrophobic coating for the windshield (for when it’s raining). And finally, use checklists! Things that you might forget, or things that would be dangerous not to have already done in case an emergency happens. It shouldn’t take more than two minutes (most days it’s about 40 seconds) to start the car, but I know that I have e.g. the sunglasses on my head for driving towards the sun (and I know which sections those are during those times because preplanning), I know that I didn’t forget a passenger, and all my items are stowed safely in case of a crash.
As for the dreams, most of them I don’t remember. The ones I do don’t tend to have (m)any other people, but I have had the “I forgot the mask (despite the checklist) == immediate isolation/return home (never happened btw)”, and the “there are so many evil (maskless) people around and no safe route!” before. I’m hoping for some things to catch on (e.g., I used to wear a mask when I was sick pre-pandemic and people would minimize it). I’ve never liked crowds in the first place, so smaller event sizes make me happier.
I was living on my own, but I locked down on 9 March. From when my SO had to leave the country on 21 March, to when I was kicked out of the country in Jan, the only person I had physical contact with was one hug on 20 September. The friend was on day 14 of her own quarantine. And when I finished the quarantine in the old/new country in Feb, that was the first time someone had seen my face in person since my SO.
I got my first ever car in Jan 2020 because I didn’t want to risk public transport. I bought lots of food and masks etc. I convinced my workplace to let everyone work from home if they wanted to (me!) a couple of weeks before the government lockdown. The last restaurant I went to was March 8 2020.
The major factors in my opinion were:
I don’t want to kill anyone by mistake, and most of the old people weren’t wearing masks properly. (And my literal next door neighbours were a very old couple who also didn’t wear their masks properly).
I don’t want long covid. If I get sick, I’m on my own. I lived alone, and I had zero family in the country. There would be nobody who would be able to help me if something happened. And my building had no elevator, so I’d need to climb up four flights of stairs while being out of breath for however long it took to convalesce.
Most people around me weren’t taking adequate precautions. I know many people who got COVID, but nobody who died from it.
Some differences from mingyuan:
I was okay with outdoors (in a forest) meetings with one (or possibly two) other people. That being said, that only happened a total of three times.
I was okay with going to further places (I finally had a car!), so long as I was away from people. I did a few same-day solo road trips (packed my own lunch and ate in the car), and lots of exploration (and virtual dates with my SO).
I did interact with others (e.g., groceries and some necessities.)
Some similarities:
When things started to open up (e.g., in the summer), people threw caution to the wind. Government allowed e.g. up to 10 people to meet in restaurants etc, so these were definitely out. People wouldn’t wear masks when outdoors even in large groups.
I did end up expanding my network of Rats (online) and learning a lot of things, though.
Right now, I’m staying with my younger sister, and she’s vaccinated because of her work, so yay. There’s a visa application in progress to see if I can return to the previous country, but when I go will depend on how accessible vaccinations are here vs there.
For now, I’m satisfied with what I did, and I think it was reasonable all things considered. One concern I have in the long term is that seeing crowds and unmasked people gets a visceral reaction, including e.g. in old movies. I’ll need to retrain myself, because I don’t want to end up with agoraphobia.
God, life would have been so much better if I could drive. I could have gone home to my family. I could have done so many things! But extremely unfortunately I spent 2019 and the latter half of 2018 cultivating a pathological fear of cars, and specifically me driving them. Agh.
Anyway I’m glad you’re satisfied with what you did, that’s really good! Definitely watch out for that agoraphobia – I’ve heard a lot of people express that same sentiment and I sincerely hope we don’t all end up socially crippled for the rest of time. Do you ever have those totally normal dreams where you’re.… doing anything at all.… and then you realize that no one is wearing masks and why are you so close to them? Alas.
Did you cultivate the fear of cars on purpose? Why? Did you use to be able to drive before?
I got my license in 2010, but didn’t really drive until Feb last year. It took me a month to start the car up. It took me another 3 months to get on a highway, and 4 months after that until I was comfortable going on longer trips. Obviously COVID, so I had to teach myself for the most part. And I’m still relying on certain automations (e.g., sensors to make sure I don’t destroy things while backing up, adaptive cruise control to control my speed and distance, etc.) I’m not sure I would be able to drive something while controlling the speed with my foot.
Two tools I found extremely useful were my dashcam (front and rear) and Google Street View. At the start, I’d spend about 3 hours for each planned hour of trip reviewing the route on Street View, finding the different signs at each point and how the intersections were arranged, seeing what they look like from above, etc. And then after the trip I rewatched the entire thing to see my mistakes (and there were plenty of mistakes) and get advice (COVID, so I sent clips to friends and family who I think drive well).
Nowadays (or rather, until I left it in my previous country of residence), I do most of my planning with the Google Maps routing tool. I take a look at it with the satellite view, and use street view where I think it might be easy to get confused (e.g., multiple tight turns after each other, where the GPS might be delayed.) That takes me about 10 minutes per hour of driving (less for highway-heavy trips). For the highway, I review the exit names I should look out for whenever there’s a split or a merge or I need to take a certain lane. After the trip, I do a review for longer trips, but I batch the shorter ones (e.g., groceries) and do that once a month or so.
Back in Feb, I couldn’t even stay in lane. I’m still not quite satisfied with my spatial awareness of the size of my car, but I can offload it to the car, so that’s okay. That being said, I’m a much safer driver compared to before, I’m much better at anticipating things that would happen 5 to 10 seconds before they happen. I’ve had many highway trips where I don’t need to touch the accelerator or the brakes at all.
Another tip is to get things that increase your safety, such as blind spot mirrors if you don’t have them, hydrophilic coating for the mirrors, and hydrophobic coating for the windshield (for when it’s raining). And finally, use checklists! Things that you might forget, or things that would be dangerous not to have already done in case an emergency happens. It shouldn’t take more than two minutes (most days it’s about 40 seconds) to start the car, but I know that I have e.g. the sunglasses on my head for driving towards the sun (and I know which sections those are during those times because preplanning), I know that I didn’t forget a passenger, and all my items are stowed safely in case of a crash.
As for the dreams, most of them I don’t remember. The ones I do don’t tend to have (m)any other people, but I have had the “I forgot the mask (despite the checklist) == immediate isolation/return home (never happened btw)”, and the “there are so many evil (maskless) people around and no safe route!” before. I’m hoping for some things to catch on (e.g., I used to wear a mask when I was sick pre-pandemic and people would minimize it). I’ve never liked crowds in the first place, so smaller event sizes make me happier.