Half-a-Year in Hawaii
Jul. 5th, 2020 11:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aFriday I had one of the sorts of days I'd dreamed of before moving to Hawaii. I got up, showered, and headed to my office, where I did a morning worth of work. It was Designers & Dragons work, on the third of the three OSR histories that I'm planning for this month.
Then I took Kimberly out to lunch at some food trucks in Koloa. Actually, it turned out only one food truck was open, but it was Mexican, so we were entirely content.
Then I came home and worked through the mid-afternoon.
Afterward, my dad came over, we worked on our Eternal Shelf project, and afterward we picked up Mary, and went down to Poipu to swim.
That's what I hoped life would be like in Hawaii, after I finished up my Skotos work, and dropped back to working on my own projects (with a bit of tech writing mixed in). Freedom to work on my own priorities, but also an ability to rest, relax, and enjoy myself. And it's been mostly that way for a month or so, albeit with the occasional medical issues we're dealing with, such as our recent trip to Oahu.
I'm creating patterns now, and so one thing I'm really trying to do is make sure I develop a discipline for working on my own projects. So when I get up in the morning, I head down to my office to work.
And sometimes I migrate to somewhere more comfortable to write, like a chair or a couch. In the future I hope that'll include the pavilion at the golf course and perhaps the beach. I don't need to be in my office to work, I just need to have the discipline to write.
But it turns out that my office is pretty nice too. It took me a bit to figure out the optimal setup for writing, but it turns out to work pretty well when I sit at my desk typing on my laptop and use my desktop computer with the huge screen to look up references.
Of course our entire time in Hawaii has been colored by COVID-19. We're mostly open now, though no one really knows what's supposed to be allowed and what's not. But the fact of the disease is certainly keeping us from further exploring the island, as I was in our first few months here, and as we would under normal circumstances.
So that trip out to the food trucks was our first experiment with a new food place since the shutdown had started. (And as I said, the other three or four foodtrucks at that locale are still closed.) And we haven't been trying out new food in Lihue.
And I'm still not gaming at the game store. Sure it's open, but I know how often I've gotten sick from gaming (almost any time I've gotten sick in the last few decades, I could track it to the game table), and I don't feel like I could responsibly do that and also see my folks regularly, so, choices.
And that also means that we're not making new friends here. No gaming. No plays. No community centers. No Habitat for Humanity. (Though I've told my dad to put my name in for a friend who is going to have a house built.) We've been cut off from pretty much all the ways that we could better integrate with our local community.
Still, we're very pleased to be in Kauai instead of Berkeley for the duration of this pandemic. It's safer and we can do more. The people here are more responsible about protecting the community. And given the masking requirements it's a lot more comfortable to be driving than walking.
And we're still very pleased to have moved to Hawaii generally. I think these are likely to be the most extreme circumstances ever for both physical and personal isolation, and we're doing fine.
So as things open up, as we feel more comfortable traveling the whole island, as we meet new people, as we're able to actually leave the island for workshops, for vacations, and for visits to California, things will be even better.
Now if we can just get a vaccine and a president who isn't a moronic and malignant narcissist by the end of the year!
Then I took Kimberly out to lunch at some food trucks in Koloa. Actually, it turned out only one food truck was open, but it was Mexican, so we were entirely content.
Then I came home and worked through the mid-afternoon.
Afterward, my dad came over, we worked on our Eternal Shelf project, and afterward we picked up Mary, and went down to Poipu to swim.
That's what I hoped life would be like in Hawaii, after I finished up my Skotos work, and dropped back to working on my own projects (with a bit of tech writing mixed in). Freedom to work on my own priorities, but also an ability to rest, relax, and enjoy myself. And it's been mostly that way for a month or so, albeit with the occasional medical issues we're dealing with, such as our recent trip to Oahu.
I'm creating patterns now, and so one thing I'm really trying to do is make sure I develop a discipline for working on my own projects. So when I get up in the morning, I head down to my office to work.
And sometimes I migrate to somewhere more comfortable to write, like a chair or a couch. In the future I hope that'll include the pavilion at the golf course and perhaps the beach. I don't need to be in my office to work, I just need to have the discipline to write.
But it turns out that my office is pretty nice too. It took me a bit to figure out the optimal setup for writing, but it turns out to work pretty well when I sit at my desk typing on my laptop and use my desktop computer with the huge screen to look up references.
Of course our entire time in Hawaii has been colored by COVID-19. We're mostly open now, though no one really knows what's supposed to be allowed and what's not. But the fact of the disease is certainly keeping us from further exploring the island, as I was in our first few months here, and as we would under normal circumstances.
So that trip out to the food trucks was our first experiment with a new food place since the shutdown had started. (And as I said, the other three or four foodtrucks at that locale are still closed.) And we haven't been trying out new food in Lihue.
And I'm still not gaming at the game store. Sure it's open, but I know how often I've gotten sick from gaming (almost any time I've gotten sick in the last few decades, I could track it to the game table), and I don't feel like I could responsibly do that and also see my folks regularly, so, choices.
And that also means that we're not making new friends here. No gaming. No plays. No community centers. No Habitat for Humanity. (Though I've told my dad to put my name in for a friend who is going to have a house built.) We've been cut off from pretty much all the ways that we could better integrate with our local community.
Still, we're very pleased to be in Kauai instead of Berkeley for the duration of this pandemic. It's safer and we can do more. The people here are more responsible about protecting the community. And given the masking requirements it's a lot more comfortable to be driving than walking.
And we're still very pleased to have moved to Hawaii generally. I think these are likely to be the most extreme circumstances ever for both physical and personal isolation, and we're doing fine.
So as things open up, as we feel more comfortable traveling the whole island, as we meet new people, as we're able to actually leave the island for workshops, for vacations, and for visits to California, things will be even better.
Now if we can just get a vaccine and a president who isn't a moronic and malignant narcissist by the end of the year!