Disclaimer: First and foremost, wishing everybody good health both mentally and physically during these tough times. Because without that, none of these following (mostly) lighthearted quotes would’ve been possible.
“In this world, I believe you can strive to have it all in life, just not all at the same time. And that’s especially true in a pandemic.”
“Congrats world! You’ve somehow found a way to transfer free time from the caregivers and the elderly to the young and carefree.”
“Congrats world! You’ve managed to transfer body weight from caregivers to single folks. I’ve averaged 2 miles worth of steps running down toddlers just inside the house…on weekdays when I’m supposed to be on my butt working. What COVID 15?”
“Not sure I can think of another state of the world that could place such physical and mental stress on the old and the caregivers while simultaneously simplify life for those in other life stages.”
“It’s fun to hear some of my single friends take up knitting, writing, playing a new instrument, or just glorious self-care with their newfound free time, but I live in a world where my showers have to be planned hours in advance or else they don’t happen!”
“If your baseline level of anxiety isn’t higher this year, there’s probably something wrong with you.”
“Just remember, if you do parenting well the first 5 years of a kid’s life, it’s an 18 year project. If you don’t, it’s a lifelong project.”
“My worst fear is to have my grown up kids tell me, ‘you were never there.. the damage’s already been done.’ That’s much worse than thinking I got passed over for all those promotions and raises when they were young and needed me…”
“Potty training twins in a pandemic is highly not recommended, unless you want to do video calls wearing wet clothes.”
“How are we supposed to potty train when people are hoarding toilet paper and disinfectants?”
“Just compare men’s restrooms to the ladies’ across the world: potty training for boys never end.”
“So you say a lot of people were forced to move in and deal with their parents cuz of COVID eh? Welcome to the eastern hemisphere.”
“Living with your extended family might be mentally taxing, but when will you ever get to have this much time to spend with family again?”
“If we don’t take this time to revisit our roots and what’s important to us, it’ll be a pandemic wasted.”
“For those who think it‘s better to have some physical distance between work and home, do me a favor and just take a real long circular route to your neighborhood Starbucks and then go back to your work station in your bedroom…”
“For the execs who say productivity suffered based on studies of work from home, shouldn’t they know a lot of people were displaced from their normal support systems and forced to fly by the seat of their pants for months? Seems like garbage in, garbage out.”
“The forgone GDP or so-called output gap is gonna be there a long time. And some people are going to be off-ramped to a lower trajectory permanently. The scarier part is I expect the cost to be borne disproportionately by new grads and caregivers.”
“A nice way to look at this is we probably pulled our retirement forward by a year or two from not being able to pay for childcare, go out, or travel all year…”
(Daddy listening on work call) Toddler: ‘no want uncle.. no more talking.’
(Mommy ending a work call) Toddler: ‘Bye-bye baby!’
“Uhh… I think I should get going. My kid just watched 8 hours of TV today.”
“Offices have to understand that working in 30-minute blocks separated by 5 disruptions is not the same quality as working for 3 straight hours. Life is a bit more complicated than grade school math now…”
“I was already envious of non-parents when I was stuck in baby jail two years ago. And now I’ve become even more envious of them after being put right back into COVID lockdown jail last year.”
“I know people are celebrating the end of 2020, but let’s break this down: Q1 2021 is decidedly worse than Q1 2020. Q2 is somewhat better this year given last year’s fog of war. Q3 might actually be worse cause you might be forced to return to office with no real hope of herd immunity. And by Q4 we’ll be lucky to have most of the population jabbed but will still need to take the same precautions with lots of cases going around and kids still not vaccinated. Hold the champagne until 2022.”
“I’ve got a question for the anti-vaxxers who are afraid of the unknown long term effects of a novel vaccine: how do you weigh that against the risk of long-term effects from getting COVID, perhaps repeatedly, given imperfect data both ways?”
“Talk about being set up to fail. #remotelearning”
“Believe me: after a week of homeschooling, you start to think injecting Lysol might actually work.”
