This week marks the end of the third week of isolation at home for me. As our technical work is primarily remote anyway we began this practice 1 week before the UK was put into lockdown. Now that situation is government mandated that means both myself and my colleagues are at home until UK.gov say so.

Not all people have the luxury of staying at home, getting paid and keeping out of harm’s way. I’d like to thank people in my local community for keeping me running during the lockdown: Haigh’s Farm Shop, the three local Co-Op stores in Mirfield, the local Hermes delivery driver and I’m sure many more to come. It’s far too easy to take people for granted and I hope that at least one positive outcome of this lockdown is that we learn to appreciate what these people do for the community.

In terms of work nothing’s really slowed down for me as of yet. I still have upcoming projects to plan, projects going live, live-running systems that need some technical assistance. Should that dry up the plan will be to do some level of self-training to top up our skills. I haven’t had the time to even think this through yet but I suppose brushing up on SQL Server, T-SQL and maybe even learn some Python for fun in my spare time.

It has certainly been interesting watching the sudden adoption of “WFH” (Working From Home) practices. There will of course be long-term ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic and not every change inflicted will be positive. I’ve certainly not missed the mass-migration that is the 9-5 rush hour and hopefully new working practices can begin the long and arduous process of finally killing that off. Surely there will be many environmental, social, health and economic reasons for that.

Stay safe and keep observing lockdown.