Physical Races Cancelled = Influx Of Virtual Races

 Initially, I had planned to have run several races this year such as the Las Vegas Women's 1/2 Marathon in Las Vegas in March, and the Havasu 1/2 Marathon and Star Wars 1/2 Marathon in April.

In addition, 2020 was going to be the year I completed my first international race which was going to be the Disneyland Paris 1/2 Marathon in September. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, all of my races were cancelled. Luckily, the race directors were able to reschedule the Las Vegas Women's 1/2 Marathon for October 18, 2020 and the Havasu 1/2 Marathon for March 27, 2021.

While I was bummed that my physical races were cancelled (because I like running with others and earning races medals.) 

Luckily, the Rock N Roll running series decided to create a free virtual run club and I joined in in April. Here are some of the virtual race medal I earned by completing various running distances.

Working on My Fitness With YouTube

 With the gyms being closed, I've had to look for new ways to keep my daily routine going. My daily routine begins with exercising first thing in the morning. One good thing that has come from the current global pandemic is that I have rediscovered my love for doing home workouts via YouTube.

Below are photos from my favorite YouTube channels.

Although the COVID-19 quarantine restrictions are slowly being lifted, I don't see myself returning to working out at the gym anytime soon. Through the YouTube workouts, I like the variety of workouts as well as how I can exercise whenever I want and no have to worry about wiping off exercise equipment or having to wait for my preferred exercise machine to become available.

Books Read COVID-19 During the Quarantine

     I had the recently epiphany that all of my blog posts as of late have been only about work. In order to create better work/life balance, this post will show books I've read since my job closed to the public on March 21st.

 If you want the full list of books I'm reading for my two 2020 reading challenges, check out my previous blog posts on the 2020 Popsugar Reading Challenge and the 2020 52 Books in 52 Weeks Reading challenge.

May COVID-19 Work Chronicles

     Work life DC (during corona) is weird but has slowly become a habit. I got into work on Monday and Friday while teleworking from home Tuesday-Thursday. On the days I work from home, I answer chat reference questions, monitor our seven Facebook pages, do professional development by watching webinars and answer my work emails New changes that have occurred DC include having tons of teleconference meetings by my boss to boost staff morale and plan for the future. I mentioned in a previous posts that we're planning to have our summer reading program online.

     For the online summer reading program, since this is the first time we're doing this, staff will have to be trained on how to used the new online platform. In addition, since a secondary component of the summer reading program is entertainment, we are having to work with the performers we already hired to see if they can come to the library and have their performance recorded. Luckily, most of the performers have been willing to work with the library to make the performances happen. The biggest issue with this from the performer perspective is how long is the library going to have their video available of our social media channels since they want to keep the element of surprise when it comes to their performance. I suggested having the video available online from the time it is recorded until the end of the reading program which will be in early August but we shall see how this goes.

     Other future projects my boss wants staff to do is create content for a library newsletter, create content for our new YouTube channel, investigate establishing a book delivery service, establish ways to perform outreach during this crisis. So far, library staff have sent handwritten cards to patrons that regularly visit the library which has been well received. At our last staff telemeeting, she suggested that she may have staff call patrons to check on them. I feel really uncomfortable about doing this considering my impression is that when a person signs up for a library card, they trust that the will not be called by the library unless it is for library business. Library staff aren't social workers and as such, staff should not be put into a position where that may be told things that they can't do anything about or hear distressing information. I am proud of myself for communicating my concerns to my boss via email. 

     As time DC passes, I am feeling more and more burnt out of the public library environment because I feel like my director is oblivious to the low staff morale. Since my director is part of several Facebook groups for library directors and follows several library Facebook pages, as she's seeing what bigger libraries are doing and wants us to be doing all the things in an effort to so have "essential" the library is and instead of all the staff picking in so the whole library can succeed, this ends up falling on the shoulders of one of two people.