How Are You Doing?

[jjpor]

 I realise I've not been very active at all, either here or in Doctor Who fandom generally, for the past...well, longer than I care to recall, to be honest.  We can discuss my feelings on the Chibnall Era (which is what I choose to call it because, no, I don't like it much, but it isn't anything to do with Jodie Whittaker or the Thirteenth Doctor) some other time.  There are more important things going on at the moment.

This is, I think it is fair to say, a pretty strange, scary time for pretty much the entire world and everybody in it.  I'd wager those of us who indulged in dystopian fantasies about what might happen if X or Y won a particular election, or if a particular referendum mandate was indeed seen through to its bitter end, didn't quite expect anything like this to happen.  Myself, I'm managing to get by both work-wise and personally, and keep myself and those I care about as healthy and safe as I can.  However, I realise that depending on your personal circumstances that could be a lot easier said than done.

So, I don't know, I just thought I'd post something here and just ask how people are doing, and offer my good vibes and best wishes to all of you.  It's been a while, but I hope all of you are keeping as well as can be in the circumstances, and if you'd like to offer your greetings (from a safe social distance, of course), I'd be very glad to hear from you.

Comments

[persiflage_1]

Hello stranger!

Me and mine are currently all safe and well. I am not enjoying my unprecedented holiday from work as much as I might since I'm not getting paid (boss won't pay me until the Govt's employee retention scheme gets going - and that might not happen before the end of April, so things for me are fraught).

I'm doing my best to stay positive-ish, however. Or at least to hold the gloom at bay.

Stay safe and well.

[thisbluespirit]

Hello you! ♥ I am glad to hear that you are okay so far, and it's always great to see you pop back up. When you didn't even for who_at_50 with the new Who, I thought we had ALAS lost you forever. I see we need to try harder!

I think I can officially say that most of my flist Did Not Like the finale (to varying degrees of Doctor Who is dead to us and where do we go from here upwards), and you can vicariously share in our dismay here should it make you feel any better about the giant retcon of horribleness. (I was moved to write a double drabble of mourning even.) Anyway, when I've recovered and feel like a DW fan again, I'll let you know. How about you?

Or, if we should focus on the positive, Sacha Dhawan was pretty good, right? ;-p

[john_amend_all]

I'm in a reasonably good position, having a job and being able to work from home. I'm seeing the government's furlough scheme from a different angle, with higher-ups in our company demanding documentation for our users on how it's going to work when we don't actually know that ourselves yet. So we're having to Do Something by lunchtime rather than plan out what might actually be useful. It's a bit of a change from what usually happens because, to give them credit where it's due, HMRC are very good about publishing what we need to know in good time.

[ravenskyewalker]

Good to see you turn up again! I've been pretty scarce here, too, but do keep an eye out.

DW S12 actually moved me to mostly quit watching - watched Spyfall, liked Sacha Dhawan's Master, figured that if he showed up again it wouldn't be until the finale, so watched nothing else until Timeless Children... which I decided was garbage, although Whittaker managed to finally act in a way that reminded me of the Doctor (because she seems to wake up and act when she can spark off Dhawan), despite being held captive and having everything endlessly explained to her, *yawn*.

Anyway. I've been surprisingly addicted to playing Pokémon Go since September, and am finally grinding my way toward Level 40 (which is the last Level to reach).

I'm well so far in this pandemic mess, but am furloughed from work and applying for unemployment (waiting on paperwork, which could really show up much faster, as my sister considers it her life's work to call me up every day and demand that I stop procrastinating, which I'm not even doing here).

Mom's safe so far in her assisted living house.

I'm in one of the states in the USA where it seems to be showing up a lot, California. My sister and her kids are in another, Washington state, where there are lots of Chinese and Indian tech workers with some atrocious hygiene habits, such as spitting in the street and coughing openly all over. Fun times.

Unfortunately, I've already lost a longtime coworker to COVID-19, as he was away on a trip in February and probably picked it up on a plane or in an airport. When our bookstore had to close in March, I texted him to ask how he was doing. He texted that he'd got back home, got very sick, and was being tested for COVID-19. When I didn't hear from him again, I texted to ask how he was a couple of times with no response, then heard on the unfortunate date of April 1 (April Fool's, but not a joke) that he'd died.

I imagine this will be a growing problem, considering how badly-handled it's been by two major countries, and that a lot of us will eventually have known someone who died of it.

[kaffy_r]

Hello there! This comes from more than a month in the future (I do love time travel, don't you?) I wished you a belated Happy Birthday today, and among the wishes were hopes that you had a deficit of worries and a surplus of joys - I still hope those things for you. I'm glad to hear that you're managing to get by.

Like you, I've been absent from The Intarwebz, even though I haven't wanted to be. But I'm trying to get back into things.

(Thanks, by the way, for differentiating between Chibs and Thirteen and her Fam. The latter two I love; the former? I've been underwhelmed. I'm not twisted up in knots about the last twist of the last series, mind you, since I don't think it changes the nature of our favorite Gallifreyan, nor does it mean that she's not of that planet ... it just sets up a fascinating mystery that I hope Chibnall hires better writers than he is to take on. It's just that Chibnall lacks the ... hmm ... inner fire? Glow? that I think is needed to be a Who producer/showrunner.)