Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

27 Mar 2020, 14:23 p.m.

We're Still Fine

We haven't been outside since ... Saturday?

The CDC says all households "can "practice routine cleaning of frequently touched surfaces"; the New York Times (see "Clean your home") has an animated GIF saying "Clean high-touch surfaces in your home every day." So I'm improving how frequently I use an alcohol wipe (especially on my phone) or some bleachy spray cleaner on the refrigerator handle, doorknobs, light switches, and so on. Last night my hands smelled like bleach when I went to bed. I wonder if I will learn to associate that smell with dread.

It's such a pretty, sunny day outside. I have the window open and the sunlight warms my elbow.

I've gotten better this week at concentrating on work. I sometimes use a timer to limit myself to 10 minutes of what I saw someone call "doomsurfing."

A friend's best friend has COVID-19, went to the hospital this week, and, as of yesterday, is on a ventilator. I talked with my friend this morning, listened, gave her a bit of welcome distraction, like how funny the governor's interview with his brother was.

Yesterday I teared up at how generous so many artists have been this month -- giving away new albums, films, books, for free, online, to help everyone cope. Ken Burns's Baseball, for instance.

Most of my writing is in email, chat, or GitHub. I added an item or two to a crowdsourced list of free and open source video or audio conferencing platforms. Cool Tools ran my review of a great sports bra (with a stock photo of a model who is not me, by the way). I finished and published a blog entry about my team's pip work and helped a colleague move a lot further toward a new pipenv release. I collaborated with Leonard on starting a shopping list for the day, weeks from now, when our desire for eggs and onions is strong enough to make us reset our isolation clock.

PyCon North America is cancelled; it would have been in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, in April. Title of Conf would have been on May 7th in Detroit, and WisCon was going to be in Madison in late May. All of them (at least the in-person bits) are cancelled. I am figuring out whether and how to present the Otherwise Auction online anyway, just as I would have at WisCon, and how my team working on pip can still form relationships and swap tips and experiences in small group calls to partially replace what we wanted out of PyCon.

This morning my mom called, worried. New York City is now the place in the US where COVID-19 has infected the most people. I reassured her: we're staying inside, we're taking all the precautions.

The fundamental and inherent subtext of every diary entry and every blog post is today closer to the surface. I'm still here, I still exist, I'm still here.