[godot]

A bit off-topic but related to the intro in this readme..

> Why? > I'm super bored in lockdown. Add a Raspberry Pi 400 and a few tiny displays...

I feel like there are two distinct kinds of lockdown experience. One, you have kids, and you have absolutely no free time because now your kids are home and you're working from home. Two, you don't have kids, and you're super bored every day. Seems like not much in between.

[gofreddygo]

Super agree. Its either "I'm bored out of my wits" or "i'm exhausted with my kids"

Folks with more time and energy on their hands have managed spend it all on a broad variety of rabbit holes.

Folks with kids have managed to wither whatever minutes were left away, looking at the other group's reports on their rabbit hole expeditions

Both, together have managed to give google enough confidence to double their ads and disable the "skip ad" buttons on youtube.

[jcelerier]

I don't have kids and I don't think I've gotten bored once - I had the time to watch a whopping two TV shows this year.

[minot]

Early summer was strange. I finished watching seasons one through four of the expanse on Amazon.com

Kept getting side tracked because it takes a dystopian science fiction set hundreds of years in the future to discuss basic income and climate change in television.

[ikornaselur]

I'm honestly struggling with finding more time to do stuff and I don't have any kids.

I have loads of side projects I want to work on, loads of games I want to play, books I want to read, movies and tv shows I want to watch and I have a relationship takes up a lot of my time.

I was doing Adventure of Code this year and I haven't managed to finish the last 7 days because I haven't had time for it yet.

Though I strongly believe that if I was single, it would be a very different story and I'd be very bored and restless with all this time. Maybe the relationship is the biggest difference.

[colordrops]

> Both, together have managed to give google enough confidence to double their ads and disable the "skip ad" buttons on youtube.

I'm finding that I'm not using youtube that much anymore. It wasn't really a conscious decision - the annoyance pushed away my reptilian brain.

[read_if_gay_]

I barely use it on my phone anymore and on my desktop I installed an adblocker again (before I only used uMatrix).

But we’re a minority, obviously Google’s choice is paying off.

[akiselev]

> But we’re a minority, obviously Google’s choice is paying off.

Or a growing towards a majority and Google is in a deathspiral trying to meet quarterly growth targets by extracting more attention from an audience that is catching on faster than it is growing in size.

One can hope.

[jimktrains2]

I have ublock for Firefox on android and it works as expected.

[DanBC]

> together have managed to give google enough confidence to double their ads and disable the "skip ad" buttons on youtube.

Just in case there's anyone from Google reading this: I'm tolerant of ads. I'd like the option to "skip the first ad" but watch the second. Or just put the short ad first.

Sometimes I don't mind watching a 15 second ad, but I really don't want to watch a 4 minute ad.

[ryanianian]

This is especially true if I'm not even sure I want to watch the video. If I follow a link to a random youtube video there's a 50/50 chance I'll stop watching after 10 seconds of content. Having to watch even 5 seconds of ads before that makes me avoid following links in the first place.

[op03]

Thats only if you believe raising kids isn't a rabbit hole expedition.

Quite a few people are just too confused, clueless and unconscious of what expeditions they are on.

[scotty79]

I have no kids, live alone and am absolutely fine. Just playing games, reading internet, watching youtube, chatting and occasionally doing something else that happens to interest me at the moment.

Not sure how it would be different without pandemic? Maybe I'd spend few percent of my time outside and/or interacting with people in person, but probably no more.

I'm one of those people who found out that their preferred lifestyle is called quarantine.

[hmottestad]

Kindergarten? School?

At least in Norway the government has focused on locking down old -> young. So bars and restaurants and gyms are pretty much shut down, put kindergarten and primary schools are still open with some restrictions.

Mind you though. Most of the people I know with small kids didn’t have much time to spend on side projects before the lockdown either. Only difference now is that they save an hour of travel a day.

[t0mas88]

Netherlands used to take a similar approach as Norway, but since earlier this month the schools and kindergarten are closed. Not because many children get infected, but because parents are much more likely to stay at home when the school is closed. So they're using kids as a way to keep people at home. Kind of crazy...

[Mauricebranagh]

Now it turns out that kids at school are spreaders (especially of the new variant) - one of my friends who is a teacher has it.

[hobofan]

N=1, but childcare has been the biggest avenue of infections I've seen here in Germany. Basically every childcare of colleagues with children has been shut down at one point in October/November (when the numbers started rising here) due to infections among the children. In most cases one or multiple of the families have been completely infected as a result of that, and I guess the only reason it hasn't spread around the workplace is due to good precautions.

[TeMPOraL]

It's the reason we aren't sending our kid to daycare, despite the private facilities here in Poland staying open for a large part of this pandemic.

[scotty79]

I have exacty the same suspicion. Cases started spiking exactly 3 weeks after we opened schools after summer break in Poland, and did not start falling down until we closed down schools again.

[pavel_lishin]

N=1 as well, but we haven't seen a single case of it. In the area, I'm aware of one school that had a case of COVID a few months ago, and our local one - in which our child is nominally enrolled, but isn't attending physically - lasted with zero cases until two weeks ago.

[rasz]

Same in my family. Kid was fine, grandparents just couldnt live without seeing her weekly (slaps forehead :/) so got infected (one critical condition at one point), so did the parents.

[fest]

For someone living in a suburb but having work and daycare in city a work-from-home might actually make commute worse (or it would for me, if I had to work from home).

[spinningarrow]

It’s strange but I don’t really feel bored at all (I don’t have kids). In fact work-wise not a lot has changed except for having no commute, and since my commute was pretty short, the increase in time is quite marginal.

[drieddust]

You bet :) At the beginning of this lockdown I was excited about how great it will be to dedicate commute time to hobbies.

With kids at home only time I get is @ 1 AM.

[nkingsy]

2 kids, 2 and 4.

My wife and I both try to give the other time for themselves. She goes hiking most days and I’ve built up 3 custom bicycles over 2020 and ride them on local trails at night after the kids are asleep. Bike lights have been my best investment this year.

[seba_dos1]

> Seems like not much in between.

Why? No kids there, but why would I be bored? I have plenty of things to do, as always. Having worked from home for years now, I don't really see that big difference in regular day other than the fact that socializing and conferences have moved online.

If anything, I imagine that it would be painfully lonely if I had to live alone during the lockdown. Thankfully, I live with my girlfriend. But why would it be boring? Lockdown or not, it doesn't make much difference.

[mhh__]

I have all the time in the world and am completely bored senseless.

There is a "happy" medium between the two I assure you. Personally, I basically have two friends, neither of which I have seen for a few months now - one won't leave the house, and the other "friend" is probably a mild psychopath. Bored and lonely, what a combination...

[afandian]

Thank you for acknowledging this. The whole subthread of shared experience is highly theraputic.

[franky47]

My first child was born a month ago mid-lockdown, so I have experienced both sides. I concur.

[denimnerd42]

they don't go to bed? I work in my garage workshop from bedtime to midnight or one a few times a week. I've turned out way more finished projects than I ever did before the pandemic.

[gregmac]

That's the second part of my work day. The first part is between breakfast and lunch. During lockdown (like we're about to go into again) my afternoon becomes my other, new, exhausting job of being a crappy early grade teacher while my partner works her normal job. Evening we all have dinner together, then alternate who does bath/bedtime vs dishes/laundry/garbage/etc, before going back to "day" job and finally sleep.

[TeMPOraL]

They do, but your SO would probably like to spend some time with you as well.

Myself, between WFH, my wife and my 18mo, I get about 1-2 hours of personal time after they both go to sleep, and half of those times I'm too tired by then to work on anything.

[gofreddygo]

I've been on a mission to start my day earlier than both my SO and LO. It's been a resounding failure.

[d0ugal]

I have a 3yo and a 10 month old. Way too tired for that.

Maybe if they were a bit older?

[chrisacky]

4, 3 and a 1 y/o for me. Can agree, that it's been hard to maintain the same focus and energy recently.

[Roritharr]

We feel like the worst parents in the world because our kids apparently don't need as much sleep as other kids.

We've tried extensive bedtime rituals, tried tiring them out by going to the forest and making em run etc, but we really can't get our 1,5 year old to need more sleep than we do.

Our 4 year old tends to sleep an hour longer in the morning, but the little one is really killing us from a freetime standpoint with his 7 hours a day of sleep he needs (5-6 at night, 30m-1h a day).

Naturally this is driving my wife and me insane.

Daycares were open, but we've decided to take our older one out to reduce his contacts and give the daycare some breathing room as they are also at their limits because they've had staff quitting because they didn't want to risk getting infected for this little money (understandable imo).

The whole situation for parents is absolutely disastrous, my wife should have been looking for a new job already, but it was simply not realistic for her to start working a new job with me retaining mine and the kids at home.

As a young family in a high cost-of-living metro-area we had to decide to move as we can't afford to live here while giving our kids the space at home they need without support that allows us to work effectively.

[NLips]

I’ll throw one thing out there in case you’ve not tried it: I’ve seen plenty of advice that if your kids wake up “too early”, then counterintuitively, they may be going to sleep too late. So in your case, it’s possible that if you get them to bed two hours earlier, they’ll just wake up earlier. However, getting them to bed several hours earlier might work better. Ours are almost-3 and 5 and both sleep ~12 hours, but if they go to bed late will probably wake up early and things go to pot.

That said, I’ve zero idea how to switch sleep modes, sorry.

Our lifesaver was “healthy sleep habits, happy child” by Mark Weissbluth.

[ljf]

Don't feel bad! Every kid is different and there is no magic trick (at least that I've found!) to get them to sleep more. Mine are 4 and 6 and I'm trying to reframe my mind to not see sleep as a battle. What is killing me is that they won't come downstairs alone to play, though once here they can play unsupervised. I am looking forward to the days getting brighter so it isn't the dark that stops them.

Even taking out my 2h45m (total) commute time, I'm more tired than ever. I'm sure a lot of mine is due to stress and low level depression - I have a lot on now but so does pretty much every person you interact with.

Before lockdown I was starting to get some arduino and electronics projects in during my commute, but I've barely even had time to watch videos of other people's projects.

I just remind myself that in time this will change, that I'll find time again for myself. Over Christmas I've been trying to go for a walk alone each day and also to step away from my phone more. But it is hard - but that is OK.

[aidos]

Oof. That’s tough. I’m sure it’ll get better, but it’s definitely hard work in the meantime. Just keep in mind that it’s temporary on all counts.

[harperlee]

Don't you need time alone with your significant other? That's the only time we've got together, so it's difficult to find "me" time, as I also need to care for my relationship (not that it bothers me! But 24h are 24h...)

[BigJ1211]

You need to do that 7 days a week? Did you do that before the pandemic as well?

I assume you'd go out and meet some people? Sports? Other out-of-house activities, that's all time you can use as "you" time now.

[pbronez]

HN comment

Two small kids here, I’ll try to explain my experience.

First off, there was very little time for socializing before the pandemic. One evening a week to grab dinner with a friend was the gold standard and achieved at the cost of putting more childcare on my partner. My partner also got an evening a week for friends, so I’d have extra kid duty that day.

The pandemic has made life harder for me and my family in many ways. School closure is the obvious one. My oldest had about a year in preschool before the shutdown. They miss their school community and have backslid developmentally. My partner was already a full-time care giver, but making preschool means the younger child gets very little one on one attention, while the older one loses socializing experience.

We also lost secondary childcare. No more babysitters for date night. No more weekend play dates. Much more limited access to grandparents and other relatives.

And then there’s all the marginal stuff that surprised us. We used to take the kids to the grocery store. You could kill an hour and show them the world a bit. No longer. We used to take them to the playground and encourage them to play with other kids. Now best case my kid wears a mask and plays at a distance with a small number of kids.

I’ve found that we’re losing a lot more time to home maintenance. The kids use the house all day, we have to clean it up after they go to bed. I’m trying to get the kids to help more with that, and to move more cleaning before bedtime.

All that taken into account, I find that I can get maybe 90 minutes per day, after the kids are done, that I have some personal choice about. I can spend that time with my partner, pushing work forwards, larger chores/home projects, professional development, hobbies, socializing, or resting. There is no other time for those things.

In practice I’ve found myself avoiding large hobby and professional development projects. I love them too much. I get very frustrated when they’re started but I can’t devote any time to them. I love hitting flow State on a project, and it’s simply not possible at this point in my life.

I don’t expect this to last forever. The pandemic will break eventually. The kids will get older and need less intense supervision. I do my best to be present and focused on them during these early years. Everyone tells me they go by fast in retrospect.

PS this comment took me over two hours to write because of these circumstances

[powvans]

I have three boys, aged 3, 6, and 9, and your comment pretty much nails our experience. The lack of childcare, the lack of access to grandparents, the lack of school, the volume of energy in the house constantly, the messes, the crazy amount of dishes and food prep because they don’t eat breakfast and lunch at school anymore; I could go on and on, I can laugh and I can scream and curse, in the end I do what you do and just try to be present and carry on. It is exhausting.

[pbronez]

Ha! It says “HN Comment” at the top because that was the title of the Notes app entry where I wrote it! I find myself making lots of little mistakes like that these days.

[mojoe]

I feel you. I have a newborn and a two-year-old. It can be frustrating not being able to get into the flow, but I'm just trying to enjoy this time with the kids knowing that they're growing fast.

[vinhboy]

When they go to bed is when I can actually work. But I am obviously wasting that time on hn as of this moment. LOL.

[tomcooks]

Third take: you use the free time to work on your projects and come out of lockdown stronger, healthier, and richer both in money and culture.

[pibefision]

Most important point during a world pandemic is to survive during a lockdown.