Yearning for boredom: How COVID-19 is affecting me as a stay-at-home dad
Here's what's changed for me:
Cons:
- I'm doing more laundry. Especially towels, washcloths, and clothes that have been out there.
- I'm cooking more, and with fewer resources. I used to be a near-daily grocery store shopper, but now spontaneous grocery trips are out. And I'm not great at meal-planning, so I'm still working on that one.
- I'm spending a lot of extra time cleaning and sani
- Childcare is gone. I have two side jobs, one as a high school film teacher (just three hours a week) and one as a copy editor. My school is supporting remote teaching, so I'll still be getting paid there. But who's going to look after my son while I'm teaching? My wife's home, but she's working.
And my copy editing client is hard of hearing (okay, it's my grandpa), and he needs me there in person. I have some work I can do from home, but that's going to run out pretty quick.
Also, I used to pay for two ten-hour childcare days a week to free up time to work on teaching and editing, and that's gone, obviously.
- All household projects are suddenly important. Cleaning off the patio to set up a play area was once a good idea for a free weekend, and now needs to happen as soon as possible.
- Also, this is self-inflicted, but with my rise in stress level I'm losing a huge amount of time to lack of impulse control. I oscillate between researching every emerging piece of information about COVID-19 and the virtual equivalent of running around with my fingers in my ears:** cruising Pinterest, watching YouTube, designing blogs, etc.
Pros:
- My wife fully sees the new strain on me, and she is chipping in more -- and is around more! -- thanks to her working from home. The time that had been spent on commuting and trying to get into the office early to beat the crowd is now spent playing with my son (who I'm all but ignoring these days with the surge of chores).
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*Just trips to the grocery store and walks outside.
**Ew.
**Ew.
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