Has the Covid-19 pandemic had any effect on my business. Absolutely. Can I talk about the details? I really shouldn't.

Interestingly enough I've picked up some client work directly related to the crisis which I guess is a good resilience tactic if you can get it. I mostly lucked into it. In this case my luck was old connections decently maintained. The work will generate a few blog posts I believe.

Mentorships are humming along. Hopefully most of them will be mostly employed soon and I'll miss being their grand source of truth and annoying questions. They'll be fine though, so that's good.

I intend to go on parental leave as April ends and May begins. That's new. Going to be exciting. It also means I'm not really taking on more clients or mentees for a while.

Other than that, working on the garden, getting our house in better and better order. Trinket by trinket, box by box. Our new additional furniture we ordered has been delayed by the pandemic unfortunately, so who knows when that arrives. Interesting times.

Podcast recommendation: Critical Role

Available as videos, podcast and more through critrole.com.

I've been in need of straight up entertainment. This is an RPG stream where voice actors play Dungeons & Dragons. The first campaign starts a bit slow as they get rolling but I've found it immensely entertaining, engaging and worthwhile. It is a bit of an epic, so don't worry about keeping pace or catching up. Very much a marathon, not a sprint. They're also an incredible example of carefully growing something online and trying to keep it good and kind.

If you are stuck at home, which I know for many tech people either means work as normal or working slightly less conveniently, this might keep you company quite well. If you can't work this is probably ideal quarantine material.

Steps forward, in spite of everything

The ground has dried up and we spent the weekend gardening. My wife did some weeding and planted some of our spare garlic from last year. I built a new raised bed and mostly filled it. Today I feel like I've been at the gym. Which is good. So our first planting has been done and we are enjoying our outdoors more and more. Gardening is really good for clearing my head, whether I'm shifting tonnes of soil or planting some seeds in pots. I thoroughly recommend it. Growing chili peppers in the windows was a good start for me.

All the stuff we wanted to fix inside the house has basically been fixed with the help of a few relentless in-laws. The office-to-be has had windows installed (for the light, not the operating system). Some decisions still to be made before it can be painted and wallpapered.

We really want to have people over, show the house, repay some of the help, be good hosts. But Corona hit its stride and now things are very limited socially. What I've noticed as a direct consequence is that both I and my friend & family are a bit more social. We reach out more, we get in touch more. I imagine we all make sure that the other people are still out there. That we still have them. Feels pretty good in a way.

I'm curious how this will affect our society down the road. Will it be the death of handshakes in business? Will it mean companies are more careful about keeping a buffer on hand, growing sustainably and not over-extending themselves? How will society cope with all the consequences of jobs lost, lives lost and government control measures? Will this shift how we see our leadership? It seems accountability might arrive suddenly. I hope it does. I hope the stress and concerns of the jobs lost won't break the new-found solidarity back down. I hope the common ground of mourning lives lost will be a uniting force and keep people emotionally connected.

There is so much we don't know about what the other side looks like. As a work-from-home freelancer I'm not particularly affected. And most of my grandparents have passed on previously so I don't currently have strong reason for concern. But of course, if I come back from parental leave into a recession I'll definitely have some hard times. I'll have to improvise at that point, nothing much else I can do aside from prepare. I'm not particularly worried at this point but I am paying attention.

I'm not sure I have some deeply considered idea I want to transmit across to you as a reader. This feels like a social call to me. I just want to update you on things right now. I'm doing good. How are you doing? Feel free to share what concerns our thoughts you have.

Thank you for reading, I appreciate it

- Lars Wikman