How is COVID 19 Affecting your work and income?

How is the recent apocolypse affecting your work and income?
In Australia, many businesses are being shut down, and others are suffering less work than usual. There have been massive lines of people trying to claim un-employment benefits.
It's going to be a very difficult time for a lot of people.

For my family,:
* I got an email today saying that everybody in the company is going to have a 10% pay reduction so as to help the company weather the downturn of business. This is a bit of a blow, but at the same time, I am extremely grateful to still have a job.
* My was on a special education program (long story) but is having to go to reduced duties because there is no longer funding in the hospital for her buddy shifts. This would normally mean that she will not get many shifts because there are so many limitations of what work she can do. However, we believe that in the coming weeks there will be no shortage of work for nurses. In fact, they will probably be mobilising all the nursing students from the university to help. So we're confident there will regularly be some work she can do to maintain a steady income.

My plan is to cut out some un-necessary costs where I can, and try to work hearder at my creative endeavours especially those that I can monetise. I can't see myself being able to afford the same level of professional editing I would usually consider essential for self-publishing a book in the forseeable future, so I'm considering making more extensive use of beta readers so I can get my work out there. I am also working on patching up a story that I think would be a good fit for a small press publiser, which would mean significantly lower royalties than self-publishing, but also no up-front financial cost to me.

What about everyone else?

Holly and I are very grateful to not be experiencing any hardship. My wife is also in health care (pharmacist) and there has only been an increase in opportunities for work and overtime. So we are taking this as a God-orchestrated opportunity to be more intentionally tuned in to the people in our lives that have specific needs we can potentially meet.

My English training center in China is doing online classes until the government allows schools to open up again. This allows me to still teach, but it's very different from what I'm used to. My classes are normally at least an hour long, but these online ones are only 30 minutes. The quality of internet connections vary per student, so it's hard to get everyone consistently participating. I have to teach at different times than most of the other teachers since they're in China; I'm getting up and teaching classes at 6:00 AM a couple days a week, and on Friday nights, I stay up until 11:15 PM teaching. One of my classes is having trouble with their Internet connections at the time we meet, so I will probably have to get up even earlier to accommodate them.

Not sure how my salary will be affected by this, I've already noticed that I didn't get paid for February (I didn't work that month, but I usually still get paid during holiday months).

Meanwhile, my dad, a semi-retired engineer, has been working online from home. He was still going into the office until my sister called him and told him to go home. She's apparently the only one he'll listen to.

Holly had a rough Monday morning this week. In tears she told me about some policy changes that would force her to spend a lot more time doing the most stressful part of the job. She also confessed to having trouble having the boys home and making noise around the house, which she adjusts to during the summers, but is just harder right now with other stresses piling up.

I had a talk with the boys and instituted a "Library House" policy each day until 3:30pm. ("Treat being in our house like you would being in a library. Soft muttering or whispering only, headphones or barely audible volume on all screens, etc.") That helped Holly a lot. And thank you Jesus, her company modified the policy change so that she no longer has to do a lot of extra stressful stuff. But with the way things are, policies and routines are changing frequently in the medical world (Holly is a pharmacist) and so keeping up with those changes in how she does very detail-intensive and health-effecting work is now a low-level but steady, extra & ever-present source of stress.

My youngest was also crushed to learn he wouldn't see his friends again for the rest of the year.

The challenge in front of us now, and what I've been frequently praying for with my family, is that we learn how to more and more be patient with each other and sacrifice our desires to better help and love each other. To do what we can to not irritate each other, and also to try and take advantage of opportunities to not just tolerate, but ENJOY each other in this unusual time of more constant togetherness.

I'm still doing the same amount of work from home as I would in the office. Hopefully, this will lead to me being able to work from home a few days a week so I don't have to commute as much. Fortunately, I'm not in danger of losing my job because the email servers and virtual machine cluster at the college where I work still need to be maintained.

Praying for Holly.

My wife hasn't been getting much work lately. People everywhere are shocked to learn that nurses are out of work during a pandemic. It sounds counterintuitive. However, the government cancelled all leave for nurses, plus they cancelled all elective surgery, which means casual nurses are just not needed. It's not just her, either. Lots of nurses haven't worked in weeks. But, last night she was given a shift for this afternoon, and it's going to public holiday rates, so we're exciting and praising God for that.

AdamCollings wrote: Lots of nurses haven't worked in weeks. But, last night she was given a shift for this afternoon, and it's going to public holiday rates, so we're exciting and praising God for that.

Thanks for your prayers. So sorry to hear about how you guys are being impacted. Praying for you and your family.

Linda just had a very interesting phone conversation with the manager of ICU at our local hospital. Looks like there could be an interesting opportunity for her to get some work once COVID hits us bad (which could be happening soon as we've had to take on a bunch of patients from a hospital that was closed in the north-west coast due to a bad outbreak among the staff).
Feels like God is working.

Sounds like she could be really positioned well both to bless people and help your family! Please keep us posted as much as you'd like so we can pray for you!