Check-in #13

Wow, check-in #13. I am not superstitious and hence, unlike many airlines, won’t skip #13 as an unlucky number. Bet you are fine. Because you have been reading my blog for a while, so I am sure you are cool with how I am rolling.

Happy Sunday! I hope you all had a great (as much as possible) week and an even better weekend. Let me show you a snapshot of Sam’s activities today and during the week.

#puppyathome

Sam decided this week is Mommy week. Whenever I am in the yard with him, it’s me who has to play with him. And if I dare to ignore him, there is a high likelihood that he will take his ball and bump right into my legs. That is very convincing though. Approximately 100 lb of energy bumping in your leg, I mean.

So, it’s been a week since my last check-in. On Wednesday I was too tired to write anything. I needed a restful evening. Just watching TV and playing some games on my iPad in parallel. Because I really can’t just focus on one thing. If I would purely watch TV, the series could be super gripping, I would still be bored.

My brain has been working like that forever. When I learned for my College exams, I also watched TV all night. And I could have totally told you what was going on in the series I watched as well as what I just read in my books.

But I digress, again. There is another reason for me not having written a check-in. Sometimes the Covidiot in Chief and his fan club have me at a total loss for words. The same applies to the situation some folks of his fan club, such as Mr. DeSantis, have put us in. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/12/world/coronavirus-updates.html

Florida has set a new single day case increase record with 15,000 new cases in just one day. Congratulations, Mr. DeSantis. Your policy of not making any state wide decisions to protect the Floridians is working super well with the stupidity of the Floridian Covidiots.

This and the fact that people still seem to not have realized they need to get rid of the man that is going to turn this country into a dictatorship has me seriously scared. And sometimes this feeling is overwhelmed and I could not deal with this topic.

Instead I wrote another blog post about self-care. And since this blog is ultimately a step towards becoming a professional writer / author, I am now regularly posting my articles on LinkedIn. You can find said blog post here https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6687785480991371264/or by just clicking here on the direct link https://mykindofsuccess.net/ok-to-not-be-ok/

check-in-#13

May I ask y’all a favor? If you are on LinkedIn and you are liking the posts I linked above, please share them with your followers. That would help me out in a way you would not even know. And of course if you found me through Facebook, please feel free to do the same. Maybe I can make this my future career with your help.

Meanwhile we will continue to wear mask and keep our physical distance. That’s the best we can do. And hope for the best. We have to buy some new masks though. The two we are having are not enough. Plus they were made very early by a great lady using hair ties. They are so strong, my ear keeps flipping. Must look funny but is not if it’s happening in a grocer store full of Covidiots.

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Recently I came across this mask though. And was wondering what’s wrong with people? Why? I am admittedly not a lipstick person. I would barely wear lip gloss and only to special occasions. But seriously, who would wear these? Or are there restaurants out there that demand these to be worn by their hostesses? I sure hope not! Can’t wait to see my first ponytail club Floridian in one of these! I might stop and start a, physically distanced, conversation just to see how bad it is.

You might have noticed, that I am talking about physically distancing and not about social distancing anymore. We heard this somewhere on TV and Henning said that keeping your physical distance is not the same as “socially distancing” where you are avoiding 100% of social contacts. And I could not agree more. And since how you name it is how you will experience it, I changed it.

Shortly after this whole thing started, my inbox was literally flooded with emails from basically all Corporations I had ever given my email address. They could not wait to let me know, how they were going to handle this pandemic. Which was of course all I was wondering about. And for those that did not catch me via email, tried with their TV commercials.

Not anymore. The pandemic is not over at all. Actually the opposite is the case here in the US. However companies seem to have moved on. Yes, they have or are still making changes to their BAU. But they have started to focus their marketing money on “now normal” instead of “in this together” messages.

And even though I could never stand the latter (as it is not true at all), I feel like them moving on makes it even harder for our Covidiot friends, to continue and follow the necessary precautions. In the utter absence of common sense, the education and be it through ridiculous “in it together” commercials is desperately missing.

Instead this is happening.

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So much so, that Europe made a very bold decision. They are banning US residents from entering Europe. And believe it or not, this not even a big news topic here.

Even though US tourists LOVE traveling Europe. Ideally 10 cities in 5 days and with organized trips and definitely including places that serve absolute authentic food. No, not authentic to the country they are visiting. Authentic US fast food. Yep, that is a cliche and a stereotype and was shared with me by a friend that is from the US.

If things continue as they are, we will have won the fight against Covid-19 as the US won the Vietnam war. It got too expensive and so we will pretend it is over. We just might have a lot more collateral damage this time around.

Next week is going to be a hot and stormy week per weather forecast. So far summer has been super hot with the occasional afternoon thunderstorms. Just a few days ago we had a very close encounter with how sudden thunderstorms can develop. Usually there is a siren that sounds a pretty loud alarm, once lightning is detected ~3 miles away. Which gives you plenty of time to get out of your pool to a safe place.

A couple of days ago it was pretty dark and cloudy. We knew rain would be coming soon. However there had not been an alarm so Henning went into the pool and I started to play with Sam. We saw a huge lightning, that made Henning literally jump out of the pool, grab Sam and we all took shelter under our porch roof. Quite dangerous, to be honest. Sam did not mind at all. He does not get easily scared by thunder. Play time is play time.

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So since it’s Sunday night (here at least), another stressful week is about to start. In the last two weeks I heard yet another unbelievable (for me) but great example of “how not to be a leader”. I am friends with the person impacted, which makes it so much more annoying. All I can do is be there for them. And try to drive change. The way I think I can do that, is by writing about it. If you would like to learn more about it, you can read this LinkedIn post and my blog post here on mykindofsuccess.net https://mykindofsuccess.net/who-or-how/ and here https://mykindofsuccess.net/who-or-how/

My week will be packed with meetings. Tomorrow I am representing my boss in a BUR with our SVP. I don’t mind. Other than that it is at 8 am and I will miss my morning exercise routine. I prefer a busy week over a week with a lot of downtime. Positive stress is the fuel to my engine. What’s your week going to look like?

Luckily I will have my little work companion with me in the couch-office. He is seriously the cutest colleague you can have. But I am missing the real colleagues very much. A few weeks ago I had planned to meet with one of my team member at our house. However our CEO was very clear in how he feels about leaders organizing meetings. And I think he might be right. So I had to skip that. Would still love to meet in person though. Maybe we will have a personal meeting for dinner in a restaurant with outdoor seating at some point.

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This is how my favorite home office work companion looks like, when he just had his “espresso treat” and Mommy and Daddy get another treat for themselves but not for him. Needless to say, he got another treat, too. And left us immediately to enjoy the bed and the bed room by himself before we join him later.

Which will be soon! Have a great Sunday night, fellow Covid-19 warriors and the best upcoming week yet. Remember, we can’t control the situation but we can control our attitude about it. Let’s do this!

Keep your distance, wear your mask, stay healthy and take care!

Hugs,

Nannette

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