JOHN: Welcome to episode -- we're not really sure of the episode number. CHANTE: And we wouldn't even know what day it is because it's, stay inside. Is it night or day, 9 to 5, 5 to 9, whatever. JAMEY: I do know whether it's night or day. That is one thing that I'm still on top of. CHANTE: Yeah. It just feels like my days [inaudible] so much that it feels like the boundaries are dissipating, whatever you want to call it. They're dissolving. I don't know. JAMEY: What did she send us? I need to know. JOHN: My boss sent it because there's this local family in Raleigh that does these really good like parody videos. And this is a Foreigner cover of, (singing) "I wanna know what day it is..." [Laughter] JAMEY: That's good. For real, that's good. CHANTE: All right. So, we're ready to go here. JOHN: Yeah. REIN: Wait. Aren't we already going? JOHN: [Chuckles] CHANTE: Do we need to announce ourselves? REIN: Is there really any difference between when we're on and when we're not? CHANTE: See? That's what I'm saying. REIN: Does anything matter anymore? JOHN: This whole thing can be a cold open and then we'll do the title like halfway through and then continue on as if it didn't happen. CHANTE: Let's do that. REIN: Live from New York, for now. CHANTE: [Laughs] Well, our special guest is Covid. Dare we say that Covid has superpowers? [Laughter] JOHN: A long introducing period. JAMEY: I don't wanna Covid that at all. I don't care about the answer, I only ask questions that I care about the answer. CHANTE: I think it sort of does have a superpower, though. I do think that a pandemic is an exponential way of making folks get clear about the things that matter. It has a way of making the things, like that special feature where it can blur everything in the background. You can see your face clearly, sort of like that's like, "Oh, okay." Because you go into that hyper vigilant mode, fight or flight usually, at least for me. And so I feel like it's helped me get a little bit more clear about the things that matter. Like if something should happen to me or my family, I do know what I want to happen. And I do know that I don't want to spend my whole days at work. And it's been more like because my days have been blending and bleeding into each other. I'm like, no, this is not a sustainable life, period. It's just not. So I need to get very clear. And I had goals for the weekend to actually be very specific in writing those things down. So for me, there's been some type of a silver lining which is just helping me get more intentional. REIN: The other superpower it has is getting millions of people to practice mutual aid. JAMEY: Yeah. JOHN: Yeah. I think there's an interesting dichotomy between what humans actually do and the stories they get told about what humans do when the shit goes to hell. And I wonder if that's partly because the people that end up writing stories that get wide distribution, whether it's a movie or a book or whatever, whether they think those stories are realistic, I don't know. But I wonder if they get like widely distributed because the elites think that that's what humans are gonna do, because that's the way they see the world. And so they propel those stories because that's the narrative that they expect. Something has been popping up in little discussions here and there, and something I've been pondering lately, like why there's always such a difference there between fiction and reality. CHANTE: That is such a good point. The gatekeepers, I always say the people who write history are the ones who are the victors. But I think it's also they're the gatekeepers. And this is also why I tend to question whether it's a video or some type of -- whatever the media is. I question who is the curator behind it. And I have to kind of look down and drill down on their values and what they are kind of contributing to the conversation because I can't trust that everyone has the same shared morals. And they don't have to but it certainly does inform the way I consume things nowadays. JOHN: That reminds me of probably about 10 or 15 years ago when people's history of United States was like a big popular thing. And someone had written a Howard Zinn reviews Lord of the Rings and those sort of political breakdown of like, we're keeping told that Sauron is this terrible thing and it's pretty much all propaganda. What was the real goals? Why is the victors of the battle telling the story about how good they were and how evil he was? I think it was largely presented as parody, but it was actually a really interesting point to question those narratives. CHANTE: I need to check that out because I don't know if I've ever watched that. JOHN: I'll see if I can dig it up. I think it was at McSweeney's. CHANTE: That would be great. Thank you. JAMEY: Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about the idea of people in the future are gonna want to understand how I'm feeling right now, which is kind of like a weird feeling. I haven't been exactly journaling, but I have been kind of just like writing down thoughts sometimes because how like after something crazy happens in the world and then people read journals of people who went through it. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing right now. So that kind of feels wild to me. REIN: The other interesting thing is that this is the first global pandemic in the age of Twitter. So, in this sense, there will be more of that available for future historians than ever before. JOHN: Yeah, I started thinking about that. I feel like I do want to record my thoughts simply because you're going to remember them differently in the future and having a record will actually be useful. JAMEY: That's a good point too. CHANTE: Unless somebody alters our damn audio. [Laughter] CHANTE: Creates deepfakes about us. REIN: The point is that my shitposts are providing a service to the future of humanity. That's the point. JAMEY: I would absolutely agree with that. CHANTE: That's a good point. I agree. So, I feel good about myself already because we're gonna be contributing to the greater good and to humanity and write our story. JAMEY: Yeah, maybe historians are going to listen to these podcasts in the future. CHANTE: They better. [Laughter] CHANTE: If they know what's good for them, they will. JAMEY: A threat. Hey future historians, if you know what's good for you. CHANTE: That's right. Keep listening. [Laughter] CHANTE: I think it might be great for context to kind of identify right now as to who we are and how we're showing up. JAMEY: Where we are. CHANTE: Yeah. Like I'm in the Midwest in Chicago and I'm a working mother. I run a consulting business and I also work somewhere else at a company called VillageMD. So, we're in healthcare. My mom was like two miles away. So I joke, I'm like, "We're a multi generational household." My mom's here mostly, almost every single day. She actually works in the health system, and she goes into the hospital every day. So, as a family, we're dealing with this all differently. The kids are five-year old twins. My mom won't let me tell her age, but we've got a span going. And so over here, what I will say is that I'm feeling lots of emotions. And as a person who just deals with being in a couple different cultural identities, I feel like this is impacting people in my life drastically. I get nervous, but I also have some hope and some, I think, belief that we can overcome it. I just want to see more sharing of resources, if that makes any sense. JOHN: For sure. I'm just outside Boston. I also work, healthcare company. It's interesting. I've been working from home since 2013 or whatever. So, my actual normal routine hasn't really changed much. I work the same stuff. Obviously, work is crazier now because we're supporting virtual health initiatives and things like that and those are really busy right now. The mechanics of it haven't changed, but everything else around it has changed. And one of the things, actually a really good advice from my therapist last time, that just because that hasn't changed doesn't mean you're not dealing with so much stuff and you can't just assume the same level of productivity and the same level of interest in all the things that you used to be doing and getting them done and not beating yourself up because you're not cleaning the pantry and doing workouts and also completing that website you were gonna build. Just because you have more time at home doesn't mean you have more cope available. JAMEY: Yeah, I've been struggling with that a lot myself because I guess I'll do my thing. I'm in upstate New York, Western New York. And that's really weird because being in the same state as New York City, but not being in New York City is like a very weird experience right now. We're not using the phrase shelter in place in New York, but we've been pretty much sheltered in place longer here than you would have expected because they put the order out for the whole state, and so it hadn't really blown up here at the point where we were like, "All right, everything's done. We're shutting down." So, that's been kind of interesting and weird. But I'm not working. I had quit my job at the end of the year and was taking a couple of months off. I was going to do some theater. I had a theater production in South by Southwest that I was lined up to do, so that got canceled. And I've been kind of job hunting, but that's been tough. A lot of places are on hiring freezes and such right now, even though like I was already working remotely before all of this and I was looking for remote work. But I've been at home a lot. I have a lot of time. And I'm struggling with what you were just talking about, John. Like, I want to get stuff done. Like also what Chante was saying about being intentional, I keep thinking about like this is a good time to be intentional, but then I just have been struggling to actually do it. There are days when I get a bunch of stuff done and I feel like, "Oh, I got a bunch of stuff done and it feels good." And then there are days, like today and yesterday have been those kind of days where I'm just like, "I can't." I don't know. I don't know where the time has gone because I've been staring off into space or something. So, that's been really tough. And I'm trying to not beat myself up about it because I agree that that's not productive, helpful. But I wish I could push past it because it's making it worse. And if I can push past it and get something done, I know I would feel better. But I just can't sometimes. REIN: I'm in Portland, Oregon, and we are near Washington, but our reported case rate is relatively low comparatively. I have worked from home for a long time. My wife is also currently working from home. I've sort of flopped back and forth between consulting and employment over my career, and basically I get tired of one of them and then I go do the other thing. I actually converted to an employee in February. I didn't realize at the time how good of a decision that would turn out to be, because a lot of contractors, as I'm sure all of you know, it's hard right now for a lot of [inaudible] and contractors. Jamey, I was listening to you talk about how you don't feel like you're doing enough. And the thing I would say and I really believe this, I don't know if it will help or not, but here goes, is that every day that we observe physical distancing or self-isolation, we are actively doing something that helps people. It's actually one of the most important things we can do. JAMEY: I've been thinking about that a lot, too. I read a Twitter thread about this where it was like, "If you're sitting around in your underwear and you're surrounded by your own snack garbage, you're saving lives doing that. Good job. You're crushin' it." CHANTE: They're talking about me right now. [Laughs] REIN: I get it. My anxiety is also not [inaudible] to logic, but I figure if we keep saying it out, maybe it'll sink in somewhere. JOHN: Maybe it'll just reduce at 10%, which is also good. CHANTE: Yeah, but you know, I really do want to say, Jamey, thank you for being honest, because I really believe that a lot of folks are probably feeling more so like you might be feeling who listen to this show, because most folks here are in tech. And we had gotten to this place in the job workforce that people were feeling very confident about their decisions to leave and take chances on themselves. The economy was booming. Six months ago, I would've told somebody, "Hell, yeah, quit your job. You only live once. You'll get another one. We're in a good spot." And that was a little pompous of me to say that. I've gotten so many reach outs from people that are either having been told that they might lose their job in a couple of weeks or they already have lost their job, and folks who were sort of in the gig economy kind of struggling, like I was working 20 hours here and I was doing other kind of 20 and 30 on my own. There's just a lot of people who I think are in a feeling of anxiety and despair and do not feel secure. And even if you do have a job, you don't feel necessarily secure. JAMEY: I'm also very fortunate because I know that there are so many people that are panicking about finances. And even though I'm not working, I'm not at the point right now where I'm panicking about finances. My husband is actually still working. He's considered essential. He works at a machine shop, but his machine shop does like the city sewer and plumbing. So, he's still working. It's like a little bit scary that he has to go out and such, but it's not like an extremely social kind of thing to do. And so we still have an income and I'm still feeling like I'm in a very fortunate position. I was trying to express recently that I need to find a job. Obviously, I need to find a job because of finances at some point. But I think that my mental health from not having anything to do and not having a routine, it's like something's got to give with that faster than I'm gonna become in extremely dire straits financially, which is a fortunate position to be in. But I still need to find a job because I'm gonna go crazy. And so I'm kind of doing a lot of rationing and that kind of stuff in my head about what's important, when do I need to be doing this? What's my plan? So, I don't know. It's kind of wild. CHANTE: I can appreciate that for sure. That's interesting. Do you feel like there's been any opportunity where people have reached out about getting you getting involved in open source projects or volunteering? I've seen lots of folks who are looking for people to help on sort of like hackathons that they're doing virtually right now to try to help in terms of either coming up with a direct solution, whether it's healthcare related or non-healthcare related, that could sort of help supply chains and people in other parts of the world. I've seen a lot of that, but to be honest with you, I haven't actually had the time to dig in because I get lost in this rabbit hole. So I've been holding off of doing that. But I'm just curious if anybody's hit you up to ask you about that. JAMEY: No, I haven't seen a ton of that personally, but I guess, I don't know. I haven't been doing a great job keeping up with stuff. Again, the other aspect of this is like, for instance, I'm supposed to speak at RailsConf. RailsConf is doing online version of the conference now, which is something I totally also love to talk about in an episode about what's going on at the conference scene. But so then they asked me if I would do a video of my talk to put in their, they're calling it RailsConf Couch, which is kind of cute. And I said, "Yeah, I'd love to do that." And it's coming up on when I need to be doing that, and I just haven't. And it's been on my to-do list every day and I don't have anything else to do but I still haven't done it for some reason. And I'm feeling stressed about it. And I'm like, "Why am I stressed on getting this thing done when I'm dying to have something to do?" And I have this thing to do, but I'm not doing it. CHANTE: No, that's normal, totally. REIN: Totally normal. CHANTE: Totally normal, at least in my world. [Laughs] JAMEY: So it's this cycle that I'm trapped in right now. CHANTE: I totally understand that cycle. I have been there a few times. Absolutely. REIN: Yeah, when you have ADHD, that's just look a Tuesday. CHANTE: Yeah. That's what I was going to say. I have ADHD, but I don't take my meds. Time, what is time? My executive function is just, what is that? And then I get down and depressed about the fact that I can't actually execute the things I said I was going to do. And I'm like, "Why am I sad or why am I complaining?" I said I want to do these things and then I can actually do them. But I've also [inaudible] here, but in the Fall, I went through a big [inaudible] depression for the first time in my whole life, I've always been way up and optimistic. Never really sat with my own emotions. And it hit me and I was like, "What in the hell is this?" Like, I couldn't do anything. And it would be like weeks of that. And also, I wasn't -- I had things to do. People were coming to me for things. But I just couldn't get out of the funk I was in. I couldn't get out of this weird space I was in. And I actually don't know what changed. I think it could have been a change of the weather or something, that it was just that one day, it changed. But it was several weeks of that and it felt like it was forever. It might not be the exact same thing you're feeling right now, but I feel like I can relate to it. JAMEY: Yeah. I also was having a pretty hard time in the Fall and Winter. I quit my job because of mental health kind of reasons and made some changes in my life. And it felt good. But it's kind of scary to me now. I'm still doing better now than I was in like November. But I feel like I made all this progress, and then immediately the world was like, "Nope, shut down on that. You can't keep doing all of these things that you are doing to make changes in your life to be better." And so it's been scary for me about how much of this progress am I losing and going to lose? JOHN: Yes. It's not a good feeling to worry about that. I don't think I'm struggling with depression on the same level, but the urge to do things that improve me is gone. Like I can keep shit running stage, but it's not the make things better stage. JAMEY: That's a good way to put it. I understand what you mean, totally. REIN: You know, the nice thing about bipolar disorder is at least if you wait a week, you'll feel different. [Laughter] CHANTE: Or sometimes not even a week. That sort of reminds me in some ways of that conversation you had before about resiliency or the difference between thriving and surviving. I definitely think folks are going to be in survival mode. And I understand it. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, I'm all about that model. And also, it aligns nice to look like energetic stuff. If you're into chakras and things like that. So it's like you really step into your chakra because that's about these primal things we believe and know to be true about our identity and having money and things like that. And then, yeah, all the things I'm seeing remind me of that, like living in the red and living in the first root chakra. And I don't see as many people as much as we might want to be in that places of like self-actualization and transcendence, like, "Get the hell out of here." Folks are wary about where they're going to live or if they're not worried about today, they'll be worried about it in 30 more days or not even, which just makes for anxious energy for the collective. JAMEY: Yeah. CHANTE: Yeah, it's a lot. REIN: Can I just rant for a second about people who are like, "Chakras don't exist. They're not real things in your body." It's called a metaphor, my dudes. [Laughter] JOHN: I was actually preparing to send an email to my landlord and say, "Listen, I'm still doing great. I don't anticipate any problems paying rent for the foreseeable future." And then I'm just like, "Jinx. Fuck! Can I even write these words?" Shit changes so fast. [Chuckles] Speaking of my friend Aaron pointed out that the phrase for the foreseeable future is a completely different phrase than it was like two months ago. It means like next week, like that's how far we could foresee at the most. CHANTE: [Laughs] For sure. Absolutely. Because I think that there are people who say, "Oh, we can recession proof our business." I'm like, "Yeah, okay." I don't think anything is truly recession proof, period. And it does take these catastrophic sort of things to make humans either rise or fall. But it sucks. It really does suck what we're going through and I just don't think that we can all be overly confident. Anybody who has a job, I mean, we don't know. Let's say you have a job and it's going great and your company is doing well. But how are their vendors and their suppliers, and the folks that help with just actually getting the business done. It's interesting. I know I signed up for health insurance more than 30 days ago, but I haven't received a damn thing from the health insurance company about my cards or any of that, because they're probably not at work. They're not going physically to the office. I'm like, "They're probably not printing those." I'm just using that for example. How long do things like that happen? There are folks who provide essential and vital services. But even so, we're running very thin. JAMEY: Yeah. CHANTE: It's just interesting because this is the first time we've seen it happen globally. And it's like we might recover soon in this country three to four months, but then somebody else will be going through it and we're going to have to help them. REIN: One of the things that I keep coming back to when I think about what does this mean long term for people, for a society, is that the things, the changes we're experiencing are a difference in degree and not in kind. What I mean by that is people today are experiencing precarity in employment, in access to food and all sorts of things that are new to them. Maybe they never had to worry about whether they could get health care before. But people have to worry about that all the time. It's new to you, but it's not new. CHANTE: Touche. JAMEY: I've seen a lot of stuff about people who are doing pretty well, like middle class people realizing you're not actually as rich as you think you are. Even before this happened, I would see this kind of discourse occasionally and I always thought it was interesting. Even if you're doing really well, you're like a couple of really bad months from being broken, struggling, but you're not a couple of really good months away from being like a billionaire. There's a real difference even with people like -- there's like [gulf] and then there's like, "Oh, you can't," -- people on the podcast are not going to be able to see what I do with my hands, so this is a bad metaphor. But like the [gulf] between like normal people, a normal person who's pretty financially secure, a normal person who is like having a hard time financially. There's a [gulf] there. But then the [gulf] between either of those people and Jeff Bezos is a whole different thing. I totally agree with that, and I think that this is really highlighting that. A lot of people are in those a couple of bad months away from disaster right now. I think it's gonna be eye opening for lots and lots and lots of people. JOHN: Yeah. And I think I have a possibly naive hope that this is going to help those very middle class people, which I'm among them, for sure, start to realize how everyone else is living and understand the need for universal healthcare and like UBI, dare we say it, and things like that, that do insulate the boat, like humanity from the gutter. That would be so great if we all had that. JAMEY: One thing I've been thinking a lot about Universal Basic Income also. And one of the big arguments I've seen against it is like, if people don't have to work, they just won't do anything, they'll just like not contribute to society in any way. And I think that this whole situation is a huge exercise in the how obviously not true that is because even now in a pandemic, just like we just said, it's totally reasonable to just not do anything if that's what you don't feel like doing. And lots and lots of people are still being really creative and putting out content, entertaining us, artists, all sorts of creatives, people are helping each other. Even in these situations where it would be okay to do that, I think, people are not, as a whole, just sitting around not contributing to society. REIN: I mean, maybe to find a point on it, the things that are working are socialist ideas for mutual aid, for solidarity, for things that are sometimes derogatorily called safety nets as if a thing that prevented people from dying could possibly be bad. And they work now and they work even better when there isn't a global crisis. JAMEY: Yes, exactly. CHANTE: Yeah. You know, the thing that also, when you were saying that, when you were talking, Jamey just a few minutes ago, I was thinking, "You know what? There are days where I just don't feel like doing anything but then I'm so thankful that somebody in my collective community felt like doing something I didn't want to do." It's like these things, these feelings we have, good thing that they go in flow or be somehow some way when I'm not feeling well, somebody else can show up. Like even on our panelists, of all of us, like there could have been a lot more here. But thank God there's four of us here today who had the capacity talking. Next week, it could be different and it's okay. It truly is okay to take a break because you have to believe that somebody out there will show up when you can't. But I do think the kind of opportunity here would be to like have a coalition that it is intentional to say, "Listen, it's great." If you're doing nothing else, find people that at least share morals and values with you and try to have a community build it somehow, some way so that when you can't show up, then you can call on even one other person to go in. JOHN: This is why the myth of individual responsibility and individual performance isn't just wrong. It's also so incredibly damaging. CHANTE: Hell, yeah. That's right. We cannot survive alone. That's right. That is totally a myth. JAMEY: It's interesting that there's so many different kinds of disasters we could be living through, and this exact flavor of disaster, I think one of the reasons that it's so rough is because we are very social and we do need companionship. And it feels like the very first thing that this situation did was kind of take that away from us. And I think that's made everything else a lot more challenging. But I have also seen people coming together. I have not been on a video chat so much in my life as I have in the past week. And I do a lot of video chats already because I have worked from home for six years. I heard people talking about Zoom. Like my mom, who doesn't know how to use a computer, was asking me about Zoom when I'm like, "This is weird." CHANTE: Yeah, for sure. The funny thing is my kids, they're not in kindergarten yet, but they're setting up Zoom dates for the kids. I'm like, "Oh, my God." And it's funny, some of the teachers had never used Zoom before. So I was thinking like, "What have you been using?" And they hadn't had to. So I think it kind of forces them to up their skill set too to bring them to this century or to this new kind of fourth industrial revolution that we should be embracing. This is definitely forcing their hands. I'm actually happy that that's happening. I just want there to be just so much more intention about it. JAMEY: That brings up another good point, which is that there are things that I'm kind of happy to see happening, too. It's unfortunate that it had to be in this situation. I've always been a really big proponent of remote work. I've worked remotely my entire career. I don't think I could work not remotely. I'm just not cut out for it for several reasons. Actually, the talk that I mentioned that I'm working for RailsConf is called Achieving Inclusivity via Remote Work and it's about people from underrepresented backgrounds, like remote work helps us a lot. I'm going to talk about my mental health and why that makes it hard for me to go into an office. I'm also going to talk about being trans and being actively in a gender transition, and the mortifying ordeal of being known and having people look at your physical form every day. But I'm fortunate because I have worked remote my whole career. But I see other people that are in similar situations like me that I can't because their company is like, "Oh, we don't do that. We can't work from home. We can't do remote." And I think that as you're seeing, everyone is doing it right now. And there's a lot of like 'can't, can't, can't' that we've heard in the past. And now suddenly, we can. And I think that's going to be hard to put back. CHANTE: Me, too. And I'm excited for it. I'm like, "Yes! Revenge." REIN: A number of Pandora's boxes are opening, but they contain good things like realizing that people can just work from home. And it's fine. CHANTE: And that like asynchronous communication is okay. You don't need to have instant gratification. Or if you're looking for instant gratification, get that out of your brain now because people do not have to reply to you when you send a message. They actually do have lives. REIN: You know, like grocery store workers are crucial infrastructure and should be paid a livable wage. CHANTE: Absolutely. They are critical. The CNAs, they've been treated like crap and get paid horribly in the healthcare system, but they are so critical. I've seen a big need of those folks. They have not had any time off. They would make it [inaudible] like shit goes to hell. JOHN: I mean, it probably should be a [inaudible] but it is of like medical stuff down to the levels of the cleaners and the janitorial staff in the hospitals, like they gotta be doing their thing. And from that group up, suddenly it becomes clear what value they're providing. To a wider level, that value was always there. But this is bringing that out and making it obvious. CHANTE: Yeah. It's like the invisible's more visible today, which I really appreciate. REIN: Ooh, ooh, Virginia Satir. [Chuckles] CHANTE: Go. Go for it. [Laughs] REIN: Make invisible things visible and make covert things overt. JOHN: Yeah. REIN: One of the things that's been really interesting to me is to see all of the different ways that people are adapting. And to see that it doesn't require central organization. These things are happening in completely democratic ways, completely decentralized ways, but they're very effective. JOHN: I think I know what sorts of things you're talking about, but you may have some examples of that. REIN: Yeah. People bringing groceries to elderly or at-risk people in their neighborhood, finding ways to connect with friends when you can't see them physically. All sorts of things that people are doing. The interesting thing for me is that one of the things you learn in resilience engineering is that this capacity to adapt isn't created in response to a crisis. It was already there and it's being uncovered. JAMEY: I've been thinking a lot about the adaptability of people also. I have seen it happen in myself too, because one of the things that has been continually striking to me about this whole situation, especially at the very early days of it, was like how fast I lost track of what seemed normal versus what seemed like fiction almost. And so, I mentioned that I was supposed to work at South by Southwest this year. And at the point when South by Southwest got canceled, we had seen some conferences get canceled. But I did not think that they were going to cancel South by. I just was like, smaller conferences got canceled, "Smaller conferences that were hosted by one person are so much easier to cancel. And something like South by that's got so many pieces and different, some of it's not even a part of the festival, how can you cancel it? You can't stop people from doing that, like doing unofficial stuff. People are still going to go." So I was really surprised when that happened. And it came as kind of a shock to me. And then less than a week later, they were shutting down entire cities and quarantining entire cities. I was like, "Good. They should." And that happened very quickly. I just can't believe how quick my brain went from like, "What is happening," to like, "Yes, this is what we have to do. And these are the steps that we're all going to have to take, I think." It got me thinking about just how adaptable people are. And it's comforting to me because the scariest thing about what we're living right now here on April 3rd, to me at least, I think a lot of people agree, is just that we don't know what it's going to be like in a while. We don't know what the situation with the virus is going to be like. We don't know what the situation with the quarantine is going to be like. We don't know what society is going to look like. And that's very scary. I am scared about it. And so it's comforting to me to think that like even what we're doing now was a total unknown two weeks ago, and it's hard, but I'm here, I'm adapting to it as best I can. Even these scarier things in the future, I will adapt to them too in some way, even if I don't understand them or that way now. CHANTE: Oh, yes. It's really good because I was often like, I want more people to go through something so they have that resiliency about them. And this is like the thing that forced people to do it. I grew up in a lot of chaos, so I'm used to not knowing what the next day will bring. But a lot of people don't grow up that way. So for me, it hasn't been like the unforeseeable future of losing money or losing a job isn't that scary because I've lost jobs before. I've grown up in families that don't have generational wealth and stuff that, but we find a way. And I just think like now, more people can actually understand that and we can have even greater understanding and camaraderie. And I think that when we get to that place, holy cow, we could do so much as a world because we're sort of like, "All right, now we understand what it means to actually be resilient," like that thing where we thought there's no way in hell we can sit at home or we can lose our job or we can go through this or that. Yes, we can. Yes, we actually can. So I'm excited to see what happens this Fall in this country because there's a lot of -- I'm going to get political, but yes we can. REIN: I'm kind of sad that I already used use up my Virginia Satir quote token because this is a much better opportunity. [Chuckles] She did an interview and it will be on the show notes because it's good. You can actually find parts of it on YouTube, even. If you actually want to watch her talk, that's great. But she did an interview and one of the questions she was asked was, "How is it that you're comfortable with the unknown?" And she said, "Well, I have my eyes, my ears, my voice, my arms, my legs, my mind, I have me. And whatever situation I go to, I'll have me. I have everything I need. No matter what happens. So how could I not?" CHANTE: Yeah. If you're a person listening who's never gotten to know you, this could be the time to just literally get to know you. And getting to know yourself is not like always happy. It's not always like a glass half full situation. I know from my own personal experiences. It's like looking at yourself with the ugly truth and being like, "Oh, I didn't realize I was there. What's this?" And then you have to grapple with it and sit with it. And this is the time to sit with it. I know people who have survived prison in solitary confinement for years and they've come out on the other side of it. So it's better than sitting in solitary confinement. You know what I mean? JOHN: Yeah, making the covert overt. REIN: We've been talking a lot about the technical term is adaptive capacity. And one thing I want to highlight is that this capacity to adapt, even though this sounds like a very technical term, it doesn't come from technology, it doesn't come from software, it doesn't come from machines, it doesn't come from tools. It comes from people. And you don't have to have anything special to have adaptive capacity. You just need to have people. So, if you're in an organization and that organization has people in it, you already have adaptive capacity and it's just about finding it. JOHN: Or even letting it happen, letting the adaptation to happen without trying to maintain whatever old structure was running things. JAMEY: On the other hand, I feel like I'm currently experiencing the exact opposite of all this nice stuff that we've all just been saying, including me, because while we're recording this, I was texting my husband because my favorite restaurant is closing tomorrow. So, they've been doing takeout. But as of tomorrow, they're like, "We're going to close. We don't want our employees to have to come out," and all this stuff. So we were like, "Okay, we're going to order my favorite restaurant takeout on the last day." And he called them and they're not taking anymore orders. And I'm gonna cry about it. We're recording our show and I'm gonna cry about takeout while we're talking about how good humans are to adapting to situations. [Chuckles] REIN: This is happening. CHANTE: But isn't crying about it like, you have to cry about it, though. You have to cry about it. JOHN: Yeah, it's a thing that happens. And it doesn't mean you're not adaptive. JAMEY: It's a fairly low on the totem pole thing to cry about. JOHN: It's not just about that, though. CHANTE: Don't say that because I feel like when you're in the space that you're in, you have this thing you're looking forward to for the day. And if that thing is gone, you're like, "Are you kidding me?" Like I said, I have a lot of people in my life who have been through some stuff, people have been to prison in my life. And it's like if you take away even their ability to get a snack in the day, that ruins it for them. Or they can't call home, they didn't get a pen and paper to write a letter to somebody that they were hoping to just get done, that sucks. So, it's relative to what your situation is like. Nobody's circumstances are the same. So, I totally get it. I don't think you're weird at all. I think you're human. JOHN: It reminds me of something that I've been thinking of the last couple of days, which is that like [inaudible] other people isn't just like going to get groceries or lending the money or like doing whatever physical things. It's also being the person who's got a little bit more mental health capacity than the other. And you can be the person that listens and who just talks things through. Or like being able to help in that way is just as valuable, just trying to keep everyone afloat and helping deal with where they are. REIN: Feelings just are, there's no question about whether they're right or wrong, whether we should or shouldn't be feeling them. They're just what what is. JOHN: Human? CHANTE: Yeah. I used to live in that place of like naming a thing but I don't like to name it anymore because I just think it's part of my human experience. And the things that bring me joy compared to some other folks -- But when I start to compare, when they say that the comparison was [inaudible]. I think when I compare, then I feel weird or strange. But now, what brings you joy, brings you joy whether that's takeout from your favorite restaurant. Here's the interesting part, that you might find a new restaurant that could rival your favorite by not having the thing that you wanted so badly. REIN: I can tell you what's bringing me joy right now is your kid. CHANTE: [Chuckles] They're all over. They're touching every little thing that they could touch. JOHN: Well, there's nothing more fun than climbing a Mommy. CHANTE: Right. What are you doing? Having a podcast. Let me try to see if I can ruin it. REIN: I'll just say one more thing, which is, isn't it cool to care about stuff? Even stuff that doesn't seem important. I think that's pretty cool. JAMEY: I've been playing a lot of D & D. JOHN: That's good. JAMEY: That didn't sound as related as I thought it was in my head when I said it. REIN: No, I get it. JAMEY: [Laughs] I was playing a lot of D & D. [Inaudible] earlier when Chante was talking about things like teachers and school stuff and those kind of things adapting because I've been playing a few games that were already online games but my regular in-person Saturday morning game has obviously been on hold for the last while. And tomorrow, we're doing a remote for the first time, so we'll see how that goes. REIN: We switched, actually I do one with Sam who's another one of our co-hosts. JAMEY: Oh, yeah? REIN: Yeah, and it's with Sam. And so, Sam actually lives in a duplex with some family friends. And so, they are basically like a unit of isolation now. There's no point. So, they do it from there, and then I used to head over there but now I'm remote. And it took a minute, but we figured it out and it's great. JAMEY: Actually, one of my D & D games is with Coraline. So, we've got some Greater Than Code D & D happening. JOHN: Oh, nice. REIN: We should just get like a whole panelists [inaudible] together. JOHN: I would love that. That would be so cool. Because I've had an online game for about a year and a half now because my friends who were local moved away and wanted to play. So, that's great because it's that scheduled time to see them, which is harder to do if there isn't a scheduled time because you always feel like you're imposing or whatever. And so, it's nice. JAMEY: The one thing that I kind of hinted at that I was thinking about circling back to talk about was like conferences. CHANTE: Here's my question about conferences or anything where we have large social gatherings, will we ever be able to happen again? Do we need to have conferences? What's the good or what's the risk to benefit analysis with having conferences? JOHN: I think nobody has successfully replicated the hallway track online. JAMEY: That's kind of what I was going to say too. I think the idea of having online conferences is cool. I hope we keep doing that. I think that it's great for a lot of reasons. Accessibility, not everyone can go to conferences anyway. It's going to open it up to more people in a way that I'm for. But I would not like it to replace the concept of in-person conferences. I think we need both. REIN: The thing I'm interested to see is yes, hallway tracks aren't a thing that works, but that doesn't mean that something different that is also very good couldn't be uniquely something that remote conferences can do. JOHN: Yeah, I think it's time for some innovation in that area because right now, we're just sort of trying to replicate what we used to have rather than coming up with a new thing that works in that medium. REIN: Yes, I think it should be about trying to replicate every feature of an in-person conference and more about taking advantage of the really unique things that you can do. When our team moved remote, we lost some stuff, but we gained so much more that we couldn't have done when we weren't remote. CHANTE: One of the thoughts I had previously before these things even can happened is earlier this year I said, "Everyone's having a conference and there's a lot of money tied up in these conferences." And I was slightly annoyed that they had gotten so big because I was like, "It's taking the novelty out of them." But I'm really interested in seeing what we can do in this new way of living and how we actually can re-shift some of that money to do other things and invest in like virtual reality and opportunities where we can have somewhat of a hallway track and conversation of bumping into people randomly and learning about new people and new things that we weren't able to do before. And we can redirect that funding to something like that. That would be interesting. REIN: Yeah. I mean, if we're all doing this for six months and we can't come up with something more innovative than like the Zoom model, just the standard teleconferencing model, what are we doing? JAMEY: Trying to survive a pandemic, Rein. [Chuckles] REIN: That is a fair point. JAMEY: No, I don't disagree with you, though. I think that this conversation is always so hard to have because by nature, we can't imagine things that other people haven't invented yet. We don't know what those things are. If we did then we would have just invented them. REIN: That's a whole other conversation about how does innovation even the work. What is the act of being creative? What the hell is that? It makes no sense. There's a thing that wasn't there before just exists now? What? JOHN: Yeah. I mean, I don't think anyone has a good answer for that yet. [Chuckles]. [Inaudible] mechanized creativity, we'll be all set. CHANTE: I'm here for that. REIN: Isn't that what the tech industry has been trying to do to all of its workers? JOHN: I don't know that there's been that much creativity. REIN: Creativity in this economy? Anyway, I'm going to go away now. Okay, good talk. Bye. JOHN: One of the things that we wanted to mention here on this episode is that not only are we dealing with this, everyone is dealing with this. And particularly, there are a lot of people who are out of work now, even in technology. And so, one of the ways that we devise to help that out is to open up people to join our Slack. We have a very active jobs channel and some of the resources that we're assembling to help people get in touch with the work that's going on in tech. And so at this point, I don't actually know what the process is for getting an invite. So, I should probably not be the person to...[laughs] JAMEY: I believe if you message one of us on Twitter, I know that Rein was taking DMs on Twitter. My DMs on Twitter are also open. So feel free to just find one of us and reach out, I would say. JOHN: Yes, that would work for me as well, @johnksawers. We would still appreciate if you want to join the Patreon and help support the podcast. But that's not a requirement anymore to join the community because the more people that are in there, the better it works for all of our support needs and our job information-sharing. JAMEY: And we just want to support our community. And I think that we've talked a lot in this episode about how people are coming together despite the current limitations. And we need that as people. And so, I think that what we're doing here at our Slack community is part of that. JOHN: Yeah, it's a really good point. It's not just if you're looking for a job. There's all the usual awesome Greater Than Code listener-type people who we can share this experience with. CHANTE: Thank you. Thank you all for showing up. This has been a good conversation and I'm enjoying it. JOHN: We'll see you again soon. JAMEY: Yeah. CHANTE: That's right. Thank you.