Everything has to happen quickly. Over the last 4 days, in Berlin the news started with my employer telling people to work from home if possible. There is already a great blogpost about how we should work remotely.
On Friday, 13th 😱, I suspected that such immediate action from Zalando and early news of some German federal states closing schools. My gut told me, I should go out and plan for my 2 kids ( 5 and 2). They will be at home for 5 weeks soon.
Interestingly, I decided to go to a big mall and at 9 am it was quiet empty, shelves full 😃. To be fully transparent, I also bought twice as much as I need, due to people buying like crazy and me not finding most stuff for more than a week. Yes, at one point as a father you start acting similar.
Over the weekend, more breaking news came in. Clubs, Bars are closing, any gathering of people >50 is prohibited and <50 you need to keep a list. Borders are closing.
These last 4 days were like being part of a Hollywood Movie, like "World War Z" were people are going crazy and you are trying to be calm yet it is not possible.
At the same time, I had to fix a broken door in our bed room in order to be able to close it, so I can work without being distracted by kids 😃 Luckily, when we moved to a new flat in 2018 I planned a small "home office" area which is now in our bed room and the past work area is another play are for our kids.
Here we are now, planning with my wife for at least next 5 weeks. We also sit down on Sunday and established a plan how we can both still be able to work and take care of our kids. To summarize it:
It will be a huge challenge to work remotely (2 jobs) and take care of small kids.
Thankfully, everything is setup, our Daily Standups are happening via Hangout.
One of the first things I did was to update our Spotify Account to a Family Membership as we will need multiple accounts streaming in parallel 😃
So far it feels totally surreal and I'm still trying to calm down and understand what is happening around me.
Take care everyone!
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