(Image source: Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay)
I am writing this from my back porch. It looks like I will be spending a lot of time out here over the coming weeks.
The coronavirus is rampaging across our country, our state, and my community. Mrs. C. and I are safe and healthy. We have decided to hunker down and “self isolate.” You might call it a preview of retirement!!
I had planned at the beginning of the year to get back into blogging over my spring break. It was not a New Year’s resolution, per se, but more of something I have missed. I am also starting up my digital work with Kane Harrison again. More on that soon…
Little did I know that spring break would usher in something like this!
Many of us are having to adjust. My adjustments are minor compared to many of the entrepreneurs I know. For me it is adapting on the fly to online classes (thankfully I am a co-founder of a digital learning company!), advising via email, and mentoring alum entrepreneurs via text, phone, and email. For many of the entrepreneurs I call friends it is finding a way to survive during the most uncertain times any of us have ever seen.
Some entrepreneurs I know have lost funding. Many have had to close their business indefinitely to support “social distancing.” All are scrambling to manage cash flow and extend their runways just long enough to make it to the other side….whenever that happens.
On our afternoon walk, I was telling Mrs. C. about some of the stories I am hearing. She said, “You need to start blogging again.”
So here we go. I hope this journalling around entrepreneurship, a pandemic, and an economic meltdown will be helpful.
I’ll look forward to more!
The past couple of weeks has been hectic and crazy to say the least. Praise the Lord that pretty much everyone I know is safe and healthy. My sister is a manager at an AT&T retail store (she’s not an entrepreneur but is still impacted by the corona virus just like everyone else) and they have had to shut her retail store down because of “social distancing”. Praise the Lord she is still getting paid but is not allowed in her store for two weeks. Just like you said, hopefully this will calm down soon and we can at least get the workers of our country back to working soon.
I am grateful that your family is safe and healthy, and happy to see that you are writing this from your back porch. As you highlighted it is important during this time to focus on the positives we can find from being isolated for the time being, such as getting a late start on the new years resolutions we all made. I am heartbroken for the ways this will financially hurt so many local entrepreneurs, but have faith that we will come out stronger on the other side of this. I know that in my hometown I have seen many of our neighbors come together to figure out ways to support our local businesses, and it is great to see the love for our community show during such a period of uncertainty.
Welcome back! Looking forward to reading
Though I am seeing this a year later, I am glad that your experience with online education made your transition to coronavirus living an easier one than most! I enjoy the class structure you put in place for our class. Was the spring 2021 structure the same from the beginning? Or did it take trial and error and different structures to land on our our particular hyflex model? I am glad you picked up blogging again because all that you have had to share on the topic of the pandemic has been very insightful!
Hey professor, it is really neat to look back on this and see exactly what everyone was going through at such an important time in history. Little did you know exactly how long the pandemic would last, but you still give good advice about the need to survive the upcoming months. I am glad that you got to spend more tine on your back porch.
With the pandemic going on, I believe it was very beneifical to have classes online. During this day now though I think we all need social interaction with one another to network for our future so some classes should taken online and some shouldn’t. I took most of my classes online so I could work two jobs and finish to graduate this spring; which I am incredibly thankful for.
I’m glad that the pandemic and your wife encouraged you to get back into blogging. If there is anything that the pandemic taught us, it’s that connection can be found in so many areas. I think this time of hunkering down allowed so many people to dive deeper into their passions and find online communities that share the same interests. It sounds like this blog was a rekindling of that.