When we moved to our new house a little over two months ago, I knew a little bit about the neighborhood, but it’s only through two months of running the sidewalks and main streets of the town and surrounding ones that I really have come to feel like I know the area. At this point I’ve largely mapped out the potential routes around here, but each time I find a new path, I learn a little more about the neighbors and the towns around us.

Where did the last year go? We’re all a year older, spending most of it in our bubbles during the pandemic and quarantine. While we may have become amateur bakers, picked up new skills, and learned to adapt to remote work and social distancing, we also lost an entire year with friends, family, and notably experiences. When we finally begin emerging from the pandemic, we may realize that we lost over an entire year’s worth of experiences.

I couldn’t believe how different our identical twin boys are sometimes. For two kids raised exactly the same, they absolutely have different personalities. But then our third child turned out completely different too, and I realized it can’t just be us. I looked into it, and not only is this fairly common in twins, but science may actually have an explanation for this phenomenon. Our three kids have numerous similarities like general silliness and a penchant for cucumbers.

After a few years living on Wordpress, it’s time to take some more control over my blog platform. Moving to my own set up with Hugo and AWS wasn’t incredibly easy, but honestly afer a few quick steps, I mostly had it working again. Between S3, Cloudfront, and a little scripting duck tape, I am running my own stack for this blog which will scale better, be far easier to maintain, and hopefully will result in far less Russian spam to my email.

Much of India is currently suffering through an intense uptick in COVID cases and hospitalizations right now. As cases rise, hospitals are struggling with providing essential services for those affected. Oxygen is in short supply and they can use our help to get necessary supplies like Oxygen canisters, concentrators, and PPE. As things relatively improve in the US with vaccination rates climbing (please, go get vaccinated if you haven’t yet), I wanted to find some ways to offer my support and assistance.

Surviving the pandemic with three kids under five and two fairly demanding jobs wasn’t enough for us. We needed to move too, in the middle of what would be a year-long pandemic by the time we moved as well as the height of the housing crunch. But it was absolutely time to move on from our home for the last ten years and into something that worked better for the way our lives had evolved.

We’ve spent just about the last 400 days with our kids non-stop, with maybe two total nights away from them since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. A large chunk of that last summer was with them home while we tried to work while their daycare was closed. We’re incredibly lucky that daycare has remained open since then, and stayed very safe, but it’s still a tremendous amount of time to spend with two soon to be five years olds with boundless energy and trouble expressing their emotions while also dealing with a one year old who likes to get into and explore everything.

Throughout COVID, so many things have moved to more advanced technology. There are video calls, online ordering, and contact tracing apps that we now rely on. However, one of the most important resources I’ve found in this time goes back in time to my local public library. Though I use the apps for ebooks and managing requests, I actually find browsing the shelves and grabbing physical copies of the books to bring me the most enjoyment.

The promise of remote work and electronic communication isn’t new, but it certainly ramped up and grew to so many new industries during the pandemic. When everyone went remote last year, the use of Zoom, Slack, and Teams all skyrocketed and we were promised that this new era of productivity software would result in flexibility and increased productivity. But in the end, are our lives actually better for it, and are we better able to enjoy our personal lives?

It’s been a year and I can no longer keep track of the days. We’re nearly a full year into the COVID pandemic lockdown and while I’ve adapted to it in numerous ways, merely coping with our reality means that there are days I can’t distinguish from others. Through this, we’re all just about running on empty and grasping on to any positive signs of change to recharge the batteries a bit.