#LockdownDiaries: On being productive while staying at home

Hey, guys! How’s it going? If you’re reading this article hours or days after I posted it, then I guess you’re one of the lucky guys who are privileged to stay at home and just, you know, wait for this virus to fade. Thank you, COVID-19 fighters and frontliners for being brave and saving us all! One of our little ways to help is staying at home, follow the quarantine guidelines, and try not to add to your long lines of patients because we all want is to stop this pandemic.

Contribute more than you criticize. – Brene Brown

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While we are aware there are people in need that are not reached by the government, it’s still the best if we have something to give them and help them survive this pandemic and “lockdown”. I’m not trying to side on whatever party here, but instead, this published article is to help the people staying at home realize how we can actually help our community and at the same time be productive.

Be a social media informant.

One point I learned from people on social media is spreading actual and truthful news and stories can really make a difference. Especially when a lot of “netizens” are spreading it, people notice and hear it. What I hate most in social media right now is the way they take advantage of this influence. Log in on Facebook and you’ll see hateful messages, nonsense jokes, hurtful opinions. Facebook (and Twitter actually) has become super toxic because of the “pagalingan” game where people compare things and call the other party “bobo” just because they have a different viewpoint. I mean, I don’t really get why they do that instead of using their influence to inform their followers in a nice way.

You want people to be more aware of what is happening behind those good news? Share stories or pictures. Write a good narrative that will make people realize what’s lacking. What I see now are fake news, funny yet offensive memes, or “oh ano nang ginawa ng binoto mo, nganga?”

Spread actual and factual news and stories instead. Here are some of the *resources we can share for everyone’s information:

1. DOH PH COVID-19
2. Department of Health Philippines
3. Healthy Pilipinas (DOH)
4. Presidential Communications Philippines
5. CNN Philippines

*I will try to update all lists here as much as I can.

I also suggest to check your local government units if they have official pages and forums. Official websites and pages of local hospitals are useful as well.

Have more than enough? Donate.

Kudos to those celebrities and private, anonymous angels who took (and are taking) initiatives to extend their help to those people in need. We’re just in first week of community quarantine, and we already see and feel how much assistance people actually need. I pray there are more help coming from these angels in the coming days, as we all know the government is struggling to accommodate 100% of it’s people. Tulungan nalang. Instead of attacking those that are in the position (which for sure are also doing their best right now) let’s start collecting something to actually help the people in need.

Little ways of helping.

“Sumunod nalang.” Two words that trigger a huge misunderstanding among affected people. Yes, we all are affected. I am fortunate I am working with a company that values its employees and patients more than its profit. I am thankful I can work from home, be a mom to a two-year-old. I am thankful my whole family is safe from the outbreak so far, even my sister who’s working in the airport. I am very fortunate I can buy food and other necessities for myself and the fam.

If only I have enough money and if only I can roam around our city safely and with transpo, I’d give food to homeless people. But I thought it’s also important that I stay home. I have a child and her future depends on me – my earnings, savings, my decisions, even my health.

I am not rich. There are also times my family faces financial challenges. But I do want to help because I am aware there are people who are less fortunate. So yeah, few of those links listed above this item, I donated a little to them.

What I do during the community quarantine

Go back to childhood and play with Mnemosyne.

I also have struggles being a working single mom. And to be honest, it’s muuuucccchhhh more difficult to be a “mom” when you’re working at home. In the office, I can focus my mind on doing my job all day. When I’m at home, I can’t stay on my laptop for a single hour because Mnemo always want to play with me. And I can’t say no, right? I’m a mom, it’s my priority to spend time with my kid. So unless I’m in an online meeting, I drop work and play kitchen and paint and dinosaurs with Mnemo.

Work from home.

I am a Compliance support – I receive an average of 50 email inquiries a day regarding our Compliance tools and company policies. So it’s really a big help for me to conduct trainings to lessen the value of queries I receive in total. And that’s actually not my major role in the company. I am a compliance auditor – I monitor compliance of people and their activities to our internal policies, guidelines, Philippine law and regulations. I audit 100% of the activities we do nationwide, get the trend and observations for reporting, recommend remediation and action plans, and monitor the results to check its effectivity. I also receive special audits where I do deeper dive from planning, process, people, documentations, implementation, monitoring, to payment. Part of my job is to drive projects relative to compliance awareness to people. We don’t do the audits without our colleagues understanding the importance of it – and that’s my “pahinga” at work.

Be the e-bookworm that I am.

My Mondays to Fridays and sometimes Saturdays and Sundays as well are still occupied by work. Especially now that more support is needed since we all are working from home. I am in the pharmaceutical industry and we cannot stop our operations, else, our patients won’t get their maintenance meds. But when things are putting too much pressure on me (people expecting you to come up with a new, innovative idea; deadlines; volume of work) I usually need to pause and refresh my mind.

The past couple of days, big names gave away access to their books for free as their way of helping people. I was and still am really excited to look into good books on Scribd, I might continue paid subscription after their 30-day free access. And I was and still am super happy Paulo Coelho himself gave the public official (and by official, I mean legal) copies of his books!

Moreover, here’s a five-year-old secret list I keep for online and offline reading, btw.

Read, listen, watch, and learn (links for both adults and little ones).

Cleaning the room is one thing, washing the dishes is another. And another thing that makes me feel productive is when I learn something new. Below are links to websites I’m subscribed to!

Binge-watch!

For now, I am sharing my Netflix watchlist and see if I can edit and update this article soon. I created a NEW public Facebook album on my personal account where I save movie recommendations (and maybe spoilers). Here’s the LINK.

Spread positivity (or at least try).

Not all people know my problems. Not my family, not my friends, especially not my FB friends. Since my last “outburst”, I realized losing myself in the internet won’t any good. Not good for the person I hate, not good for my image, not good for my mental health. I don’t open to my family as well. Why? My mom and dad are in their 60s and 70s already and I don’t want them to worry about me anymore. I rarely open to my siblings and friends, but I don’t usually dwell on it for days. No matter how much I want to speak, I most often choose not to, unless I can get a healthy conversation. I think discussing things with a closed-minded person is nonsense, so I just write and expect no one to respond.

I admit, there are times I answer to specific comments I find stupid (sorry for the term) and/or very “inside the box”. Fortunately, I have this special someone who always reminds me to just shut up and let people believe what they believe. So okay. #SanaAll