How did the COVID 19 pandemic affect your life?

[Madden_07]

As we all know in the year 2020 the world was stricken by an ominous plague known as COVID 19 that plunged the world into chaos. It was an event that changed so many aspects of the world, for better or for worse.

My question to you my fellow GameWinner's is how did it effect your life personally?

For me, I would say overall it changed my life for the better. Right before the start of the pandemic lock downs I had just started seeing this girl, and we slowly hit it off but nothing that I would consider too serious. That all changed when the fire nation attacked the lock downs began. At this point we sat down with each other and wanted to determine how to proceed if we wanted to make the relationship work.

After much deliberation we decided that hey, let's go against what all common sense says is a bad idea and move in together after only 3 months of knowing each other. What could possibly go wrong?

Well surprisingly, not much. We made it through the pandemic together with no real drama to speak of and now we will be getting married on 8/23/23. We always joke around and say we might have only been together for 3 years but in pandemic years it's been 10.

Aside from my relationship the pandemic was also a great thing for my career. I work in an IT deskside support role and pre-pandemic we were coming into the office every single day which was a 45 minute commute one way. Once the proverbial shit hit the fan though and we were all forced to work remote, we would never go back to being in the office full time again. I now have a hybrid schedule and traffic is nothing compared to what it once was. My work life balance and my sanity has never been better.

Overall the pandemic and all the insanity that came with it was of course a net bad, but for me personally I couldnt imagine where my life would be right now without it. I'm not trying to diminish the fact that during this time others have had a much difference experience than I, and my heart weeps for all those who lost loved one's from this terrible disease.

But what about you all, how did these events effect you?

 

[Fool's Requiem]

I stopped going to movie theaters and started watching a lot of anime.

 

[The Eye in the Sky!]

It was no fun but the net change for my career was big.

The kids in school doing remote school was very hard. My oldest was in the middle of first grade and it bled into 2nd at a totally new school. I worked full time and helped her with school, staying on time, completing work and it was very hard. I am thankful my youngest was just entering preschool so she didn't have to deal with that. My older one is much better in school so she handled it well.

My wife's home daycare was shut down for 6 months but luckily the self employed pandemic relief was given to us. Because of all the unemployment fraud and stuff, the government wanted that money back afterwards and it took us an entire year of fighting it to get a resolution and it was ruled in our favor. It was stressful not knowing if we had to pay back five figures.

My work laid off 84 of our 105 employees and those of us who stayed took 25% pay cuts that lasted almost two years. My role went from senior print designer to creating virtual event platforms - UI/UX design and some front end dev - plus marketing and pitching event designs to c-suite people at some big companies. Once live events started back up and we knew the company would survive, I was named director of graphic design and given a 110% raise. The company is back up to over 100 people again and I know where I stand with the upper management after all that happened.

I didn't know anyone that died from COVID which is the most important thing, but overall it put my family in a better place.

 

[Mark]

The pandemic began right after I “left” the last repo company I worked for which led to a federal moratorium, and I was set to begin working at another company that was interested in having me on as a senior agent. In retrospect, it’s probably good that it didn’t work out, because I was not in the right frame of mind to be on the field after the last couple months at that previous company… which is when I was diagnosed with PTSD after dodging bullets for a decade like the ridiculous bastard I am.

Also luckily for me, my ex-girlfriend and I had broken up at around the same time. When the lockdown was at its peak and everyone was hidden away in their homes… I spent that time getting myself back from the depths of the whole newly single and newly unemployed thing, having no clue where the unemployment office even was or why I didn’t see yet another train wreck relationship coming to an end.

About halfway through the lockdown I reconnected with a childhood friend I’ve known since I was 9. We’ve been together for 3 years come the end of this month, with no signs of stopping.

Along the point of rebuilding, I began gradually getting back into repo as what’s considered a consultant. Basically… teaching people how to do what I did. Steal cars and don’t die doing it. I’m kinda a jack of all trades now, and it’s the most “at-peace” I’ve been my entire life, which is priceless to me.

All in all, I’d say it helped me build a better me. It helped to keep my focus and overcome some serious shit so I could get to where I am now. I was not a very happy person back when I was living, eating, and breathing that line of work while dealing with a shitty relationship. I’m much happier now that I’ve gotten out of that rut of survival mode. Waking up every day with that fear of today potentially being your last weighs on everybody… moreso people that get a little handsy with danger instead of just flirting with it.

 

[Jawneh]

Nothing too much beyond staying home more as I was laid off work for the beginning portion of the lockdown. My work place at a time basically only had me as an employee. They were perfectly fine running day to day without me, but of course it was a bit harder and they couldn't work on growing the business. Come first wave of openings, the company was considered a retail, so the boss gave me a call and asked if I wanted to go back. In hindsight, it would've been a better choice to not go back and just enjoy my unemployment + covid check, but I had started getting a bit antsy just being cooped up at home. So I went back, but I think it was about 4-5 months later I quit as I couldn't work with my boss anymore. Yelling, arguments, disagreements, your usual things like that.

From there, I had my previous unemployment claim still up for a few months, so I went back on that and then reapplied as I had no new job yet. That process took 9 freaking months. 9 months for them to look into my case and 5-6 months of that was expedited. NY is awful with siding with employees for unemployment, so I got denied. My boss treating me the way he did wasn't enough of a reason. So 9 months later I find that I get no money for that period of time. The kicker? That few months of the previous claim I had still had the extra covid check tagged onto it. They looked at that and told me to give it back as I wasn't unemployed due to covid for that time. So loss of bunch of money plus another couple thousand on top of that. Luckily, it was no fault of my own, so there's no punishment or anything on me beyond needing to give the money back. Still sucks.

I had savings at the time, a lot of it thanks to the covid checks I could keep, so I still stayed out of a job for a bit until I did have to seriously just get a job and not just look for something nicer. A temp agency did find me a spot with decent pay building some busses. This was.... End of Feb 2022? Just around the time most covid mandates were loosened or gone. So I get in, the job was pretty enjoyable, I found that I like 2nd shift and yeah. 3-4 months later they announce that the company is leaving NY state and closing down shop. Well, their sister company builds different busses in the same warehouse, so I ended up being able to transfer over to there, so I still had a job. Eventually after over a year, I did get hired full time last April. Two months after that, now that company announced that they're closing down shop too. At least there's a retention bonus and severance.

I did want to leave the job I had before covid, but it was conveniently close by and they did work around my schedule while I was at school. Never had any benefits though. Always stayed as a full-time-part-timer with only ever up to 37.5 hours per week. Then later down to 32 a week, but I kind of secretly liked the reduced hours per week even if it was less money.

 

[Boots]

Wall of text warning, sorry.

I was lucky in that my partner and I both kept our jobs. But there was a lot of death.

My friend Jessi was the first person I knew to get the vaccine, December 2020. She was a nurse, a couple years older than me. She passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in January 2021. There was no funeral. I just looked on her Facebook memorial page and finally got confirmation it was a blood clot.

My aunt passed away. She had cancer 10 years prior. There was no funeral. 3 of my cousins became orphans.

In May 2021, shortly after getting the vaccine, my boyfriend's uncle had a heart attack mowing the lawn and died. He was up north with his wife at the family cabin, far away hospitals and ambulances. There was a funeral, but I didn't join my boyfriend on that trip. His daughter had just had a blood clot in her leg from the J&J vaccine. She and her brother took the loss very hard. The cabin has been sold, after one last opening day hunting trip. I met him at Thanksgiving 2019 and he struck me as a very kind and understanding man.

I was too wigged out, hate needles, and decided to trust my gut and not take any vaccine. I was worried about side effects, long term effects on a drug that wasn't thoroughly tested. I wasn't in contact with any elderly people, I was working from home, and I'm not in a high risk demographic. My chance of dying from COVID was less than 1%. My bubble was small. I didn't fly for almost 3 years. I followed rules and was responsible.

My boyfriend's friend's twin brother got COVID and was in the hospital on a ventilator and passed away. He was mid 30s.

I had 2 friends (mid 30s) with autoimmune disorders spend time in hospital with COVID. They're both okay now.

A close friend's mother died of pancreatic cancer somewhere in the mix of this. She was a wonderful lady.

My grandpa passed away, but not from COVID, just old age. He was not in a nursing home. He had dementia and was receiving home care, trapped downstairs in the living room, missing his wife who died in 2012. He forgot she died. I missed the mid-week intimate family-only funeral. It was a long time coming.

My employer came down with a federal vaccine mandate. It didn't matter that I rarely work on federal projects, the company does and that apparently applied to everyone. They pressured employees to get the vaccine. One guy made a scene in an all hands meeting and was fired. I feared for weeks (Oct 1 until Thanksgiving) I was going to lose my job, but I stood my ground. It felt like a gigantic game of chicken. I was preparing to be fired over this. Some of you may think it's silly, but it's my body and my choice. I hate being pressured to do anything against my will. It rubbed me the wrong way down to my core. I got a religious exemption approval letter for work, and helped several coworkers get theirs, but then 2 days later they suddenly dropped the mandate. I'm still a bit salty at my employer for that BS.

I managed to not catch COVID until January 2022. I took like a few days off work then worked half days for a bit. My boyfriend came home from work with it. He got 2 shots, no boosters, but our symptoms and recovery speed were very similar. My dad caught COVID around the same time and recovered fine. Turns out he didn't take the vaccine either. Nor did my brother or mother, I later learned.

I've been at the same company for 8 years. I worked remote/from home from March 2020-May 2022. I went back to the office hybrid 2 days a week for several months. Around the holidays I stopped going in at all. In December 2022, I caught a really nasty viral infection alongside a really bad ear infection. The doctor said it wasn't COVID, but the antibiotics didn't help and my hearing was muffled for 6-8 weeks. So I stayed home because I was sick and then when I felt better I didn't start going back in. There's a bunch of us who just silently keep working from home, and whose managers don't care. My employer has been pretty flexible about it, but they could bring the hammer down anytime.

 

[Kat]

Hoo boy, you asked...

This story will need a bit of context. In the summer of 2019, I finalized my divorce (happily, don't worry), and he finally moved out of our shared house. I kept the house in the divorce (and paid out his share of the equity obviously). At the same time, I was dating someone new. I was nervous about paying for everything on my own, and his roommate had just fucked off on him and he couldn't afford his own place by himself. We'd been dating a while, and it'd been going well, so moving him into my place seemed like a win-win.

Fast forward to late February 2020, and somehow I found myself without all the social ties I'd spent a year building, with my bedroom door smashed in after I'd locked myself in there to escape him. I fully realized then that I'd gotten myself into a very, very bad situation and needed to extricate myself from it.

I was still figuring out a plan to do so safely when the lockdowns hit. Suddenly I wasn't going into work, couldn't see any friends (not that I still had any), and couldn't even visit my parents because my mom has respiratory issues which put her at high risk for COVID. I was utterly and completely alone with him. Evictions weren't allowed except for "health and safety reasons", and property damage was explicitly excluded. I had zero evidence that he'd ever done anything to me physically (because he mostly hadn't at that point), and he'd told a bunch of his friends that I'd assaulted him (not true, obviously), so I was afraid that I'd be the one evicted if I forced the issue.

I won't get into all the details, but basically my life was a living hell for the next 18 months. I only escaped him at all through pure luck: one night after a fight escalated to physical violence, he left to stay with a friend before the cops got there. The friend let him move in, and that was the end of the worst of it.

I was renting out a room on Airbnb (partly because he never did help with the bills and I still had to pay them somehow, and partly because I figured it was less likely I'd be murdered while a witness was present), and the next person who rented after he left happened to become my friend. We're still good friends to this day, and he was only in town at all because the pandemic had fucked up the job market so bad that he took a job away from his home. I made friends with the woman who stayed after that too, so I guess I can credit the pandemic with giving me two of my good friends.

Professionally, it worked out in my favor. The job I had when the pandemic started did allow me to work remotely, so that was fine. Then somebody I used to work with had started a company, and their software department went remote obviously, and he brought me in to join that team. I'm now leading it and have nearly doubled my salary in the last few years. I can't say for sure, but I suspect I wouldn't have had that opportunity otherwise, because everyone else who had been hired for that team all lived in Phoenix. I was completely fed up with my previous job at that point, so the timing worked out perfectly.

Another bright point is I managed to get a cat of mine back right before the pandemic started (long and uninteresting story), so at least I had her through all of that. She definitely enjoyed when I stayed home with her all day every day.

 

[The Eye in the Sky!]

Speaking of COVID, I have never tested positive for it or had symptoms over the years. As a matter of fact I haven't had a cold or any multi day sickness since then either... Very strange.

 

[Mark]

Speaking of COVID, I have never tested positive for it or had symptoms over the years. As a matter of fact I haven't had a cold or any multi day sickness since then either... Very strange.

Same for my girlfriend and I, and she had the immune system of a Petri dish normally. Neither of us got vaccinated. Both of us encountered countless people that were told they contracted the virus.

Reading what @Boots had to say about the vaccine made me reflect on who all I know that had it and has experienced complications since… virtually everyone that got it. Granted, not all of the complications were fatal, I don’t actually know anyone that died from it… but… the heart complications and blood clots? Yep, heard of quite a few people dealing with those issues.

 

[Jawneh]

I guess I could've mentioned my vaccine stuff too.

I got the two doses of wifi injected and the signal booster after. The first two were phizer and the booster moderna. Other than feeling awful for a day and a half starting the following day after each shot, nothing else to worry about. The wife, kids, and wife's parents all got theirs. My wife's the kind of a person to sit down and read and research every single thing possible about these things, plus being in a risk group with asthma anyways. She wasn't risking anything in that regard so we all got our little pricks.

As far as I know, we never got covid. There was a short period time early onto lockdown that we all might've had it and were done with it. Within a span of 2 weeks almost everyone were sick basically one at a time in our house with what looked like a nasty cold or the flu. So maybe it was covid. We don't know and testing didn't really exist then yet.

There were some friends and friends of the family who managed to contract it though. I believe everyone were fine. There were fairly little deaths in my area which is a little surprising considering this is the area of all the upstate idiots.

 

[A Slightly New Used Server]

My then girlfriend and I had just moved in together and suddenly we both had to work from home full time.

We began hiking a lot more, and I realized that she was it, so I got a ring together and proposed on one of the hikes we went on. She said yes, and we were married just over a year later.

We both got double vaxxed and then got the booster later and had no side effects. Did catch a mild case of COVID at the end of the first year.

We only know one person who died of it, and he was in his 90s and already very ill. Did not get vaccinated, but I doubt it would have mattered much.

I also realized that it was time to move on from the company I had worked at for almost 15 years. Found a place that seemed like it would work out and applied. Was hired pretty quick and was rewarded with a 40% raise on what my then salary was. My job is easier than my old one was and is doing more of what I enjoyed doing earlier in my career. I also used to be 100% in the office, and now I'm 100% from home. Didn't think I'd like it, but I love it.

So overall I guess it was a lot better than some people. I can't complain.

 

[Ryan!]

I had to wear a mask at work, get the vaccine, and deal with more precautions than I was used to. My wife thankfully works from home, and our kids are homeschooled anyway, so not much change there.

 

[the_promised_land]

I was out in furlough with full pay a week or so before FF7 Remake was released, so initially it was fantastic. Then it carried on, and being stuck in a house with 3 children quickly lost its charm.

 

[Quagmire]

It made work more stressful, as Im a teacher, though once we went to 4 days a week with Wednesdays to work and prep, it was a lot easier. Still a lot of work, but I got a good system down.

Overall it didnt affect me too much, Im kind of a hermit during the school year, friends started a discord and we'd have video calls as did some other friends we'd zoom.

Biggest thing is my son, he was doing well developmentally and then he really slowed down and stopped and even regressed some. He's not back caught up, but I could tell it really affected him. He's only 6.

In fact I can tell the kids I had as freshman when we were hybrid, half online and half in school and rotated, it really affected them. I had a bunch of them last year as juniors and their maturity was really low still fore juniors. Good kids, but understandably they lost out on a big part of their development with freshman year and not being able to see and meet new friends.

 

[Marlfox]

I got furloughed for 4 months so bought a bike and cycled a lot through summer 2020. Enjoyed the first two months but second two were spoiled as I was worrying I'd be made redundant. Some colleagues continued working throughout. Got brought back part-time after that but by then had decided to move to another city for a new job. Needed a better salary to settle down and have kids. Job probably came into my hands because not many were looking to take the risk of a new job and a big move during 2020. Partner came with me and fortunately loved the new location. We both finally got covid in 2022, had a bad two weeks but then fully recovered.

 

[Marlfox]

As we all know in the year 2020 the world was stricken by an ominous plague known as COVID 19 that plunged the world into chaos. It was an event that changed so many aspects of the world, for better or for worse.

My question to you my fellow GameWinner's is how did it effect your life personally?

For me, I would say overall it changed my life for the better. Right before the start of the pandemic lock downs I had just started seeing this girl, and we slowly hit it off but nothing that I would consider too serious. That all changed when the fire nation attacked the lock downs began. At this point we sat down with each other and wanted to determine how to proceed if we wanted to make the relationship work.

After much deliberation we decided that hey, let's go against what all common sense says is a bad idea and move in together after only 3 months of knowing each other. What could possibly go wrong?

Well surprisingly, not much. We made it through the pandemic together with no real drama to speak of and now we will be getting married on 8/23/23. We always joke around and say we might have only been together for 3 years but in pandemic years it's been 10.

Aside from my relationship the pandemic was also a great thing for my career. I work in an IT deskside support role and pre-pandemic we were coming into the office every single day which was a 45 minute commute one way. Once the proverbial shit hit the fan though and we were all forced to work remote, we would never go back to being in the office full time again. I now have a hybrid schedule and traffic is nothing compared to what it once was. My work life balance and my sanity has never been better.

Overall the pandemic and all the insanity that came with it was of course a net bad, but for me personally I couldnt imagine where my life would be right now without it. I'm not trying to diminish the fact that during this time others have had a much difference experience than I, and my heart weeps for all those who lost loved one's from this terrible disease.

But what about you all, how did these events effect you?

Back in 2017, I moved in with my gf after 3 months of dating too. We both had bad flatmates at our respective flats so were looking for an escape and were willing to take the risk. Pleased to say it worked out very well, still together 6 years later and now have a baby boy to fawn over!

 

[Pun Damage]

2020, let's see...

Nothing too notable happened to me. I stayed inside, got my vaccine and booster as soon as it was available from the VA, and just continued existing like I had been for *counts* 34 years.