How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?

I think unlike most people, my life wasn’t changed by the pandemic, in-fact, I was living my best life.

I’m an introvert, and at the time of the pandemic, I was living alone in my Brooklyn apartment. I didn’t even have my cats yet. I was already working from home, so the lockdown was just another day in the news for me. I was already locked down in that I’m also a hermit, so I would go days without leaving my apartment anyway. Why should I? All my stuff was there, and it was a cute one-bedroom apartment. I had a living room, dining room, kitchen, an office and a bedroom and in the corner I had setup a little gym with a Peloton bike, some exercise equipment and treadmill and lost 75 lbs. I had also gotten a washer and dryer to put in my apartment. I had everything I needed and didn’t need to leave. It was a very demure apartment with a view of downtown Manhattan.

The only drawback I’ve seen from the pandemic is now there’s a lack of remote jobs. I have already been working from home since 2005 and remote work was easy to come by because most people before the pandemic didn’t have experience working from home. Having experience working from home was a plus for many employers.

But ever since the lockdown where most of the country was forced to work from home, now it’s hard finding remote work. Currently, I’m unemployed because my last 2 remote jobs laid me off, and in the past, it hasn’t taken me long to find a new gig. I used to be able to find a new job usually within the first five applications. But not this time. It’s now been over a year and even after putting in over 20 applications, I’ve not been able to land not even an interview. So this tells me the remote landscape has changed. So many people have flooded the field now and a lot of employers have remote positions, but they’re filling up very fast. I never had that problem before.

While I haven’t had to adapt to the pandemic, it definitely has changed things for me for the worst, regarding employment.