PIVOT: 2020's Theme both Personally & Professionally

Well - soon after my last blog I decided to take a step back from this blog and site for the next few months until after my big work event at the end of March was over. My stress was pretty high both from learning so much in a short amount of time for my job and then personally from not having my own space and feeling constantly on. I wanted to blog about it, but by the time I had time for that there were some major changes happening for me personally and in our world...enter COVID-19.

Let's start with some happy information first. I'm really getting settled into the team I work with professionally. We went to a conference at Auburn University in the beginning of March and it really solidified that I'm where I need to be in my "9-5" job world and that I am part of an amazing group of women doing great things in my department. Chris and I also found an incredible deal on a town home in the neighborhood I grew up in near midtown. We have 5 parks within half a mile of us, my work is about a mile from us, there are tons of restaurants and shops again within walking distance. I grew up wanting to spread my wings and get out of Tallahassee - and I still do. Chris and I dream of living abroad our out west in the next 5 years, but if we're in Tallahassee, the neighborhood I grew up in is one of the best (especially with working at FSU). So we've been nesting and purging even more stuff that we didn't get to or thought we might want when we packed up in Jacksonville. We also celebrated our 3rd anniversary!

We moved into the town home March 1. That conference I attended was March 4 and the talk of the conference hand sanitizer and the Corona Virus that had basically shutting down China, and Italy wasn't fairing well at that point either. The following week travel restrictions to and from the U.S. become more pronounced as the virus spread around the world. By Friday the 13 (ha!), the event I was coordinating was cancelled, and the following Monday was our last in the office. March 17, our 3 year anniversary, was my first day working from home for the FSU Foundation. It was a quiet day - we hadn't planned much because we'd anticipated it being a stressful week for me work wise...maybe just going out to dinner to celebrate. By that time, I believe restaurants stopped dine-in service. It's all a blur at this point it seems, but we ordered take out and just spent time in our new home together.

Universities, including FSU, transitioned to online learning, as well as our local schools and many across the country and world. The number of cases in Florida boomed, but not as bad as Seattle and New York City. Especially with my last job, I stopped consuming more news than even necessary for this epidemic. Watching the world deal with this together is quite interesting - amazing and hopeful, but because of how the U.S. government is handling it, sad and scary from our perspective here at home. The economy is more important right now than our citizens lives and those of us who are lucky enough to be working from home are honestly using it in part as a distraction from the daily "press briefings" that seem like something straight out of the Hunger Games. I feel such a powerful responsibility to work hard since now something like 6 million people have filed for unemployment as of last week or the week before. I am very grateful for my job and doing my part being able to work. I mourn for those who lost their job or are facing furlough because our government has done a very poor job of helping it's citizens.

Today I received my $1,200 stimulus check - but for people who no longer have a job, this one time payment wont be enough. Our country has been practicing "social distancing" and almost completely shut down for basically a month now and only SOME people are getting money. Others wont get theirs for weeks, maybe even months - and those are the people who'll need it most. It's all overwhelming. Especially the last few weeks when the Foundation took the idea of one of my colleagues and myself and pivoted our canceled event to solely support our students greatly impacted by all the changes. I crammed a lot of work into a short amount of time and with very limited resources working from home, but the digital campaign went off last Tuesday pretty well. We raised nearly half a million dollars and I got some very good experience from all of it.

Mostly, it re-enforced that I really needed to pick this back up and get going helping my husband and dad with their websites and social media so I can get the foundation for Invictus set. I need another outlet for creativity and to keep my mind engaged outside of the "9-5". This weekend I helped my dad set up his Facebook page and I'm working on a digital marketing strategy for him. His plan will look very different from plans/packages I'll offer through Invictus, but in case there are others with absolutely zero digital marketing and social media experience, I'll have a good framework to be able to offer them! Chris' marketing plan is set and we're executing phase one, which will be a lot of work, but I'm looking forward for the creative distraction. He's putting work in on his end - training for UltraMan Florida 2021! Luckily soon I'll have a good chunk of time to work on these projects as our Disney anniversary trip is obviously canceled until further notice with everything going on, but I'm still going to take the time off at the beginning of May because 1) I need it SO bad with everything we've experienced in the last 9 months and 2) it'll help with these projects. So - a lot in the works and a lot I want to talk about in these times of working from home and COVID-19, but I'm gonna leave this update right here for now because so much is already overwhelming at this point!

2020 Mood (Dad was telling us about a dream he had - it was WEIRD and hysterical. My sister and I were in tears from laughing so hard...clearly.)