Well. That escalated quickly you could say. We’ve gone from a pretty normal existence in late February to all but a lockdown/quarantine in late March.

In case it wasn’t clear before I have to preface this with saying, I live in Sweden. I know there are lots of articles and op-eds being written around the world regarding how Sweden is dealing with this pandemic. I am not interested in discussing why we do or don’t do something another country does or doesn’t do.

We are not on lockdown – in that we are not ordered to stay home. I work at the office a few days of the week and from home the rest. We have been asked to work from home if possible to lighten the load on public transport for those who cannot work from home. I do not work in an essential industry – unless you count that we sell spare parts to machines in the food industry, worldwide – so maybe we are tangentially an essential industry.

One of our customers has been asked/ordered to stop all their other production and instead produce hand sanitizer and surface disinfectant 24/7. We have a machine standing here that we are scrambling to get up and running so that we can put it into production with them so they can produce even more surface disinfectant.

We have a customer in Norway who was supposed to start a new project with us designing a new filling machine – they have put it on hold as they are also producing sanitizer and disinfectants.

Several industries here have completely shut down. My job is not threatened at the moment. We are working at full speed. No one here is sick. No one we know is sick. A few of my colleagues work permanently from home for various reasons, both health and travel related.

Upper education (16 years and up) have closed and all are studying from home. My kids however are in 6th and 9th grade and are still in school. I do not feel worried about that. My little one who had worries about getting the bubonic plague a few years ago appears to be unfazed about this. My big girl is a bit more affected and worried but she is still in school. This week is Easter holidays so they are off at the moment though.

My parents are both 70+, which is an age group that has been asked to at first limit and later cut off all social, in-person contact. They are not used to having to ask me for assistance with the weekly grocery run but we are learning. My father has COPD so I’m glad he’s taking the recommendations seriously.

It is taking its toll on me though. I go along, happy as a clam and then Boom, it hits me and I can’t shake this feeling of dread. I have shorter periods of trouble sleeping etc. I lived with depression a few years ago and I can recognise those feelings sometimes. I have however learned how to self-treat them, when I need to get off social media, when I need to get to bed earlier and get some rest and when I need to go outside for some exercise and fresh air. So far it’s been helping.

Bring on April with the hope that we are all here and well by the end of it. <3