Avatar photoSteven Savage

COVID-19, Lessons Learned, Work from Home

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

There’s going to be plenty to say, write, and learn from the horrors of COVID-19. This is about the good things we’ve supposedly learned, and the unexpected sides of these “good findings.”

See, it’s easy for us to learn from the bad things, because the bad things hammer their lessons home – we have to actively learn to avoid them (and we do). It’s also easy for us to look at the good things and learn from them because, hey, we like the good things. There’s a problem with the good things, of course – we miss their impacts.

See, the good things, have impacts. The good things still make changes. The good things, if we actualize them and apply them, still change the world, and we might not be ready for change.

There’s a lot we’re learning from the COVID-19 shutdowns and changes and so on. Often I see talks about the good things, so let’s talk about their unexpected impacts.

Let’s talk working From Home. COVID-19 has forced a lot of people to work from home, and that has led to the conclusion by many (myself included) that we can work from home more, and probably should.

The benefits are, of course, obvious, and are often repeated like some kind of mantra. We can save commute time. We can reduce pollution. We can change up our hours. We can reduce land use and rethink our work arrangements. You get the idea.

The thing is if we maximize what we learned, if we truly move to “Work from home when possible” and apply its benefits, then it’s going to make a lot of changes in our lives. Changes that will alter the world, and give us new ways to screw up.

Let’s dive into those.

CHANGE IN PUBLIC TRANSPORT: If you’re like me, you’ve wished for better public transport in your area – and mine is better than many. Work from home might be nice, but how’s that going to affect public transport, how it’s funded, and how will that affect people that can’t work from home?

CHANGE IN TRANSPORTATION METHODS: People will in theory drive less. Which could affect car sales, car maintenance, gas station sales, and the like. You’re going to see subtle economic changes and unsubtle ones people missed.

CHANGE IN RELATIONS: Work from home means seeing some people less and some people more. Relations among co-workers, friends, family, and people we interact with will alter. We’re probably not ready.

CHANGE IN REAL ESTATE PRACTICES: Less people going to work means less people using buildings for work, means changes to real estate prices, practices, and zoning. There will be vast changes in value, maintenance, and what land is used for if we do more Work From Home.

CHANGE IN EMPLOYMENT FOR FACILITIES: Your office building or wherever you work has janitors, maintenance people, receptionists, perhaps even a cafeteria. When more people work from home, what happens to those jobs? To those people? Work from home in much larger levels could put people out of work.

CHANGE IN TECHNOLOGY: If you’re working from home more, that means having the tech to do so – the computer, the internet, the cell phone, the security, etc. Will this create new jobs, alter existing ones, and eliminate others – well, yes. If you do tech support and tech setup your life will change if we work from home more.

CHANGE IN SCHEDULES: Think you’d work the exact same hours in an age of work from home? Almost certainly not. That’s going to change relations, plans, schedules, support hours, and more. Is everyone ready for new schedules even if they supposedly save time?

NEW RELATIONS: Working from home means you’re interacting with a new group of people. You’re going to different restaurants, seeing different people, making new relations. You might not be ready for that especially as other relations are changing.

CHANGE IN DWELLING: Is your current house, apartment, etc. suited for Work From Home? Would you move to a better area? How many other people are going to make changes to their dwelling, how will property values change, how will policies of apartments change? More work from Home alters everything.

Look at the above. Imagine if we worked from home more and all the sheer alterations it would make to our lives, our relations, and our economy. If we apply all the lessons on Work From Home from COVID-19, it’s going to be yet another series of dramatic changes.

But we’ll be applying these lessons in the wake of a pandemic.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Update 4/12/2020

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Hey everyone let’s catch up on my projects!

So what have I done since last time?

  • Way With Worlds: The Conspiracy book is looking good.  I think I can get it out in May!
  • A School Of Many Futures: I’ve started rewriting the book and have finished the re-outline.  I’m giving the outline one more go-over as I write, but this is going to be good!
  • Seventh Sanctum:  Continuing the rewrite, but I’ve wanted to do a generator, yet have lacked inspiration.  I’m also using this to learn Python in more detail.  I should take up some of the challenges in the random generator groups.

What’s next?

  • Way With Worlds: Keep writing the Conspiracy book. I should finish the rough draft next week! Then it’s 1-2 weeks of editing, 1-2 weeks at the editor, and we’ll see.
  • A School Of Many Futures: Keeping at it of course! Though at this rate it won’t be prereader-ready until end of May.
  • Seventh Sanctum: Continuing the rewrite, and trying to get back to a generator or two.
  • More: Getting the mojo to do other projects, but trying not to overdo it.

Steven Savage

The End Of The World As We Don’t Know It

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

My friend Serdar talked about about his disinterest in writing post-apocalyptic fiction at his blog. I wanted to add my own thoughts on this because most apocalyptic stuff and even post-apocalyptic stuff feels boring and inaccurate. As Serdar puts it, its best to take things as Mad Max like mythology, a sort of lesson or metaphor.

As for the rest of the apocalypses . . .

Most fictional post-apocalypse tales are boring, repetitive, and the same stuff. I’ve been watching enough bad-movies that took Mad Max and gave us so many battles in tight leather pants that it’s like 80’s hair bands went to war. There’s so many Zombie movies it’s a running joke that rarely explores the implications of having zombies. Most of our fictional apocalypses have been done so over and over again there’s nothing to learn or take from it – if there ever was much in the first place.

We’ve recycled our apocalypses and our post-apocalypses, so most of them are going through the motions. Most of the apocalypses are zombies, even if they lack zombies.

In addition, real post-apocalypses don’t fictionalize well.

First, some apocalypses are boring. We’re living through a low-level apocalypses now with COVID-19, and it’s not that interesting. Disasters are often not action-packed or dramatic tales, they’re the slow grind, the surviving-enough, the unending grayness of endings. Fiction doesn’t cover that.

Other apocalypses and post-apocalypses ignore or glorify the horror. We’ve had plenty of apocalyptic bombings and and disasters, we’ve had horrors and terrible mass deaths. So much fiction either grinds our face in the blood and turns it into a show, leaving us with that queasy sense of watching apocalypse pornography. Others try to ignore the horror, because it’s so horrible, building fiction around it until it’s drained of meaning.

Good apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction exists, but it takes a person that can write, that explores, that understands the subjects. It is rare, because it is difficult.

This is why my current fiction, the Avenoth series, is what I call post-post apocalypse. I’m not interested in the end of the world (in this case, a devastating war that killed 3/4 of the planet) or the immediate post-apocalypse. Instead it’s about a rebuilt world, so we see the impact of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse, but are far enough in the future to see the meaning of it all. I want a tale of healed scars and a new society with memory, where we understand the past by looking at the present.

Besides, some of these post-post apocalypses have powerful impact. When the world is grinding away or the blood is spilling, it’s hard to see what it means in the whole.

But afterwards? Afterwards is when you can look back on the works of the past, and despair properly.

Steven Savage