I work at a large supermarket in a country that has restricted trading hours on a Sunday. Christmas Eve was a Sunday last year. We open 10am-4pm and it’s been that way since 1997 when the law came into effect. I had a woman and her ~8 year old daughter try to come in 30 seconds before 4pm as I was beginning to lock the store. Told her she wouldn’t have time to grab anything and get through the checkouts as they will be closed in less than a minute. She just looked at me stunned and asked why we were closing so early at Christmas. I politely explained that the rules don’t change just because it’s Christmas Eve and she decided to blame me for the fact that she had nothing to feed her family on Christmas Day. After a bit of back and forth about how Sunday trading has been a thing for almost 30 years she huffed and told me she’d just go to the competing supermarket up the road. I politely told her that they would be fully closed by there time she got there but wished her luck as she dragged her crying daughter away. Get a fucking grip woman and take responsibility for your own poor planning.
Except for the people who look at their watch at 8:50, see that the store closes at 9 and think "I only live 8 minutes away! I can make it!" Then shop for 10 minutes.
Man I miss stores that stayed open 24 hours, or 9 to 10pm at the very least. Thrift stores especially..
I don't know how people who work outside the typical 1st shift hours ever find stores that are open long enough to get any real shopping done now..
Let's remember these hours have been "temporary" for 3 years and counting now.. ugh
I notice that too…
Im a weirdo… Ill get up mega early and go run errands at 5/6am when noones around. Get it done so quick! Not anymore.
I heard its hard to staff the overnight shifts! Now they know they dont have to.
Tell me about it.. i LOVED being an early bird, the stores were empty, shopping and browsing was a breeze and sooo peaceful..
last night as I tried entering one of the few 24 hour Walgreens to pick up a script, I found the store closed before 10pm for the 2nd time in less than a month due to staffing issues.. smh
I think it’s because they realized that they could cut costs keeping shorter hours. They won’t have to employ people for as many shifts and because everyone has gotten used to the reduced hours, maybe they aren’t losing out on that many more customers. It sucks though. Definitely one of the first things to bring up when people insist that things are “back to normal.”
This drives me crazy. Between stores having inconsistent hours, and Google having more and more inconsistent information, trying to find shit in-store is incredibly frustrating.
It's time to replace Google and YouTube.
Same same. I was the most extroverted person I knew before the pandemic. Now I stay home and read or garden most of the time and my cortisol levels have finally simmered down.
Yes! Thankfully I can laugh as I type this, but I had no idea how much of an introvert I was until I didn’t have to see people. With the exception of my family, I’m really happy to stay home.
Oh yeah. I remember telling people that just cause you got a vax, didn't mean you couldn't get or spread it... well look at us now. I guess the whistle blowers were not wrong after all.
Braiding my daughters hair. I always did their hair before but I really tried to do the more exotic and extensive braids. I practiced every day and had a blast with them. It’s something I love doing with them now that they are all teenagers. We have had some great times watching YouTube together or just talking, while I do their hair
78 is my best big day so far. Bald eagles are great! They’re also everywhere. If you have the eBird app, you can see where they’ve been logged most recently via the “explore” tab.
It all started as a pandemic boredom thing and I tried growing cucamelons because they looked cool, a gateway plant if you will. It soon spiraled out of control because they were easy and fun to grow and were pretty tasty as well and next thing you know I was growing 70lbs of tomatoes in a season and turning it into tomato sauce. Soon after I moved into canning that sauce and also turning it into pizza sauce and baking my own pizzas. At my lowest point I was at a pizza every two days habit. I started needing to grow more and can more to get the same kind of high and experimented with harder stuff like brandy peaches, salsa's, and I even canned homemade mincemeat from all my green tomatoes. I have no plans or ambitions to break this addiction! I can stop when I want to!
Haha, I'm so talented in those, I picked up those skills long before the pandemic. Everyone else was bitching about lockdowns, and for me nothing changed at all other than having to wear a mask at the grocery store.
I didn't master anything, but I learned that there's a rare advantage of chronic anxiety: you tend to handle the worst-case scenario better than your peers because you're the only one expecting it. Doesn't make it worth it for the other 999/1000 times it doesn't turn out that bad, but, y'know, might as well look at the bright side.
If you imagine the worst and it actually happens, you've lived it twice -Micheal J Fox. I tell myself this several times a day. Sometimes it works. Magnesium and CBD do too.
If imagining the worst-case scenario wasn't an automatic thing for me every time, I would certainly choose not to. I gotta try that LSD experiment to re-wire my brain. 😆
I was running 24/7 pessimism for over a decade. It's a self fulfilling prophecy and a knife without a handle. And a habit, not a curse. Mushrooms are decriminalized where I'm at. Twice a year and I'm good to go. It kills ~70% of the depression and virtually all anhedonia. I've been rewiring a clinical issue, seems like the right protocol might do the same for software issues.
I learned that using a Coleman camping lamp (electric, not gas) works better than a ring lamp to light you up beautifully without causing that tell-tale ring reflection on your glasses. I also learned to look in the camera, not the eyes on screen, to simulate eye contact. I've never been diagnosed with anything but I HATE making eye contact IRL, so this has been a blessing.
Learned to sew. Had a sewing machine and thought I would do my bit and sewed a few masks for family and friends. Now I almost exclusively make clothes for myself, occasionally family. Last year I made a dress that I wore to a wedding.
Same. Throw in Hamilton on Disney+ and discovering Bernadette Banner, and I now also do historical hand-sewing. I've lost count of how many linen shirts and shifts I've made in the last 4 years.
Emergency medical reviews. It was my first year as a doctor and I was allocate to the COVID ward due to staff furloughing. The emergency medical and ICU team weren't allowed to attend emergency calls on the COVID ward to prevent spread, so myself and the nurses, many who were also grad nurses, managed them on our own. I'm still unexpectedly comfortable at managing medical emergencies.
Thank you for all the work you did during the early days of the pandemic/now. I’m alive because of doctors and nurses who were willing to fight against the unknown for me.
Cycling.
I mean, I always knew how to ride a bike, and I enjoyed it. But I went from a lazy, out of shape schlub in his mid 40's to being a fit dad who is able to easily ride 100-150 km a day in his late 40's.
I got carried away with mine, I had hundreds of litres on the go at any given time. I really enjoyed making it, no so much drinking it, so it was getting out of hand... and I got really fat. I don't do it anymore. Bit of a shame, really.
Only do 5 gallons per batch and bottle it in 22oz bottles. I give the 22s to my friends,family, coworkers, clients, etc. and they love it. Only bottle 1 or 2 growlers for myself out every batch and share the rest. Love when I give a 22 to somebody like my kids Soccer Coach and they tell me my beer was great.
Don't know if it's a skill but I became more open minded with people because I finally took courage to engage with online players during pandemic. Talking to people around the world made me realise my religion was causing me a lot of judgements on others.
Colorguard, I saw videos on my instagram of girls spinning flags so I took my broom stick tied a shirt around it like a flag and taught myself how to spin. Later on in like July I got to experience spinning an actual flag and ended up getting my own solo.
Painting with watercolors. Never really tried the medium before and fell in love. Now my work is in a local gallery, and I recently won my first award for a landscape painting I did.
I found myself laid off from my engineering job. I took a terrible, part-time, seasonal job with my dad's company to bridge the gap. I ended up solving a bunch of his problems so he replaced his manager with me.
It turns out I'm a pretty good manager. Working on my MBA now.
may be silly but I learned that is ok to stop a movie or episode halfway and go to bed or go do something else, I don't have to finish it if am not feeling it or if I'm tired and want to sleep.
also learned that my naps are consistently 3 hours long
The subreddit I like have a lot of user made content. So I bought some simple editing software and started to foll around. People seemed to enjoy it so I did more and got better. Then I bought an Adobe suite and learned premiere and photoshop. I'm nto pro bit getting better. Again the subreddit I make these content seem to like it.
I taught myself how to nap for 15-30 minutes at a time (depending on how long I felt like I could be MIA), without setting an alarm, never oversleeping, and waking up feeling refreshed. Best skill ever, especially since I sleep like shit at night.
Oil painting. I’ve always been into art but never tried it until I was stuck working from home for a month. Turns out I like it better as a medium and I’m pretty good at it.
Nothing. You’d think I would have done something productive, but I didn’t. The only thing I improved on is how to better deal with sitting around. To quote one of my favorite movies “In training I’ve whiled away an hour in 26 minutes flat.”
Friends.
Never had any from grade 7 until almost my 40th birthday.
Joined a running group and made better friends than I've ever had before. We see eachother weekly for a run but have a chat group that doesn't go a day without some sort of random question or chat. We've been to baseball games together, we have a Christmas and summer party, I've been to peoples birthday parties, watched their dog, helped them move, borrowed random things. We have inside jokes and cheer eachother on as we run various races.
I've lived in the same small town for almost 20 years and before I made running friends it felt like I could die and no one local would attend the funeral, now the streets and areas of my town have friends who live there and coming back to our house makes me feel like the town is mine instead of just where I live.
Explosive mechanics, brushed up on my chem, and how to use an iron.
All I wanted was to make a steel ball with a switch to release a big bang and smoke. I learned how.
I picked up disc golf as a hobby and fell in love with it. I've played ultimate forever and used to make fun of people I knew that played haha. Ultimate was canceled for a while, and I still wanted to sling plastic with friends. I wasn't planning on getting into it until I absolutely piped a drive that was a tap in birdie, been hooked since.
I was already a pretty competent bike tech. But you know how when you're ok at something, you get even better, and look back and go "wow I knew *nothing*".
That's what happened to me during the bike shortage. I would buy bikes on marketplace that needed some work, fix them up, and sell them for a profit. I learned so much crap out of necessity. So many sizing standards. So many procedures.
I got into cardio and working out and keept doing it ever since, i started reading a lot and discovered that i actually hate clubing. Never done it again since
Working on my car, oil changes, brakes and tires. Even other stuff like changing wiper motor or power distribution box.
There was a whole period where i google’d and youtube’d every repair my car and house needed
Speaking up about my mental health. I was definitely more quiet about it before the pandemic, but now I’m more open to those conversations because it really opened my eyes on how many people struggled too.
I'm a domiciliary caregiver so I didn't stop working throughout the pandemic. But I did pick up extra qualifications in autism, dementia care and end of life care in my free time, which has come in useful.
Pet grooming... left a pet daycare/boarding facility in March 2020, started at a pet grooming salon as a bather in July 2020.
Four years later, I'm opening my own pet grooming salon in a new state. I started the business from scratch doing housecall pet grooms and grooming in my kitchen in the winter/on my patio in the summer
I used to eat out 5 days a week. I tried making my favorite restaurant meals. Some of them came out OK, but I was able to tune them so they were better and better. Now, I think some of my cooking is better than what I was getting in my favorite restaurants. But some meals never really worked at home. I keep trying! The "trying" is kind of fun.
Your comment is exactly the same as one just above. If you are truly teaching your kids, maybe brush up on plagiarism and why it won't help them succeed.
Running Zoom and the Camera. And, getting used to talking all over the world on Zoom. I now have the world time zones pasted all around my office. Lets see, if its Noon here, its 500PM in London and 0200AM in Sydney.
Crochet - my neighbor was sitting outside crocheting and I stopped over to chat. She handed me a hook and yarn and showed me how to chain. Now, I'm making blankets and hats and can read patterns.
I’d say becoming a better cook. Having all the extra time to scroll on pinterest and watch youtube definitely helped with finding delicious recipes and was definitely worth my time
I had really bad arachnophobia to the point I would have a freeze response and nearly pass out. My covid hobby was to get over that by learning everything I could about them.
I purposely joined any spider-related sub reddit I could find so they would start showing up on my feed and I would get used to looking at them without feeling dizzy. Plus there were so many comments from spider lovers I would read that helped me see them in a more positive light.
I also started watching a lot of YouTubers. Eventually in December of 2020 I bought my first baby tarantula to take care of so I could start the process of being around a live spider and understand their movements/reflexes better (the sling I chose was the size of a small bead and was a very slow grower).
Now, I not only have multiple spider pets of multiple different species, but I also actually get excited when I see spiders in the wild and will often protect them from getting squashed by people. I can also usually tell the differences between males and females depending on the species and have been invited to my son’s school to talk to students about spiders.
I no longer have a freeze response and instead have even picked up jumping spiders or the occasional grass spider on purpose to relocate them.
I am really proud of how far I have come to overcome that fear. :)
Does working 60+ hours a week while attending school count as a skill? Because that’s what I did during the pandemic. I did take a year long break from school, but that was a medical leave of absence, so it didn’t exactly leave me with much in the way of free time, especially since said absence did not excuse me from work.
solving a rubik's cube. taught my kids. last week my 6 year old was in a school talent show hula hooping while solving one. fun to watch, i picked it up as a hobby to do while on calls while working from home.
Honestly, making and keeping online friends. I met a wonderful person in a country far away and we've been chatting ever since. We'll meet up IRL someday when the stars align
I got into game development. I had experience with various programming languages but never could wrap my head around game dev. The pandemic gave me the time to delve into it enough to at least get a grip on the fundamentals.
I got better at using my left hands for things i do with my rights. I sometimes use my left hand to brush my teeth or to hold chopsticks with and my friends get surprised/impressed when i do
Making bars of “zucchini cheese” from scratch, because the pandemic effectively killed off the last company making a cheese substitute I wasn’t allergic to, and I was out of choices.
I’ve kept several plants alive since at least 2021.
Since then I’ve now grown dozens of things from seed, including about half of the over 100 things around my home inside and out.
I fucking love seeds now. So much cheaper than buying (then killing) a plant. For the price of 1 plant I can grow as many as I like! And I’m learning how to collect seeds!
Developing C-41 film quickly with a pretty minimal setup that didn’t involve getting a sous vide, and the delusion that I can repair any old broken camera I get off the internet. Also, bad spending habits.
Depression, anxiety, constant fear about my family, guilt that I'm not with them, envying other people that can afford living in their own country and having places they can call home
Nice /s.
But really, I am so sorry to hear that, and sadly, I can relate. My twin and I got covid, and developed a shellfish allergy that makes us have severe dizziness/migrainous dizziness.
[удалено]
Oh same I also got into gardening. Growing my own vegetables has been super satisfying and relaxing throughout pandemic
Same, I now have 27 indoor plants and plan to help my dad with his garden this summer!
If you have a fishtank use the change water to water the plants. Boosts every thing
I took up on editing.
Looking up what time the store closes. Everytime.
I work in retail and wish all the people would do this.
Are you open?
Always, in all ways
Sup?
"I assure you we're open"
I work at a large supermarket in a country that has restricted trading hours on a Sunday. Christmas Eve was a Sunday last year. We open 10am-4pm and it’s been that way since 1997 when the law came into effect. I had a woman and her ~8 year old daughter try to come in 30 seconds before 4pm as I was beginning to lock the store. Told her she wouldn’t have time to grab anything and get through the checkouts as they will be closed in less than a minute. She just looked at me stunned and asked why we were closing so early at Christmas. I politely explained that the rules don’t change just because it’s Christmas Eve and she decided to blame me for the fact that she had nothing to feed her family on Christmas Day. After a bit of back and forth about how Sunday trading has been a thing for almost 30 years she huffed and told me she’d just go to the competing supermarket up the road. I politely told her that they would be fully closed by there time she got there but wished her luck as she dragged her crying daughter away. Get a fucking grip woman and take responsibility for your own poor planning.
Bro! High five.
Except for the people who look at their watch at 8:50, see that the store closes at 9 and think "I only live 8 minutes away! I can make it!" Then shop for 10 minutes.
Man I miss stores that stayed open 24 hours, or 9 to 10pm at the very least. Thrift stores especially.. I don't know how people who work outside the typical 1st shift hours ever find stores that are open long enough to get any real shopping done now.. Let's remember these hours have been "temporary" for 3 years and counting now.. ugh
I notice that too… Im a weirdo… Ill get up mega early and go run errands at 5/6am when noones around. Get it done so quick! Not anymore. I heard its hard to staff the overnight shifts! Now they know they dont have to.
Tell me about it.. i LOVED being an early bird, the stores were empty, shopping and browsing was a breeze and sooo peaceful.. last night as I tried entering one of the few 24 hour Walgreens to pick up a script, I found the store closed before 10pm for the 2nd time in less than a month due to staffing issues.. smh
I think it’s because they realized that they could cut costs keeping shorter hours. They won’t have to employ people for as many shifts and because everyone has gotten used to the reduced hours, maybe they aren’t losing out on that many more customers. It sucks though. Definitely one of the first things to bring up when people insist that things are “back to normal.”
This drives me crazy. Between stores having inconsistent hours, and Google having more and more inconsistent information, trying to find shit in-store is incredibly frustrating. It's time to replace Google and YouTube.
So useful! Especially with the permanent hour changes
Isolation and making excuses to isolate
I was good before, but now Expert level achieved
Don't forget crippling anxiety with a side of panic attacks.
Same same. I was the most extroverted person I knew before the pandemic. Now I stay home and read or garden most of the time and my cortisol levels have finally simmered down.
Yes! Thankfully I can laugh as I type this, but I had no idea how much of an introvert I was until I didn’t have to see people. With the exception of my family, I’m really happy to stay home.
Becoming a world class virologist with studies of social media.
Didn't we all, though?
I wanted another degree after getting ones in climate science and constitutional law. 😜
As a climate change scientist I don’t even know why I went through 6 years of tertiary education, everyone I talk to is an expert in climate change
Oh yeah. I remember telling people that just cause you got a vax, didn't mean you couldn't get or spread it... well look at us now. I guess the whistle blowers were not wrong after all.
[удалено]
Braiding my daughters hair. I always did their hair before but I really tried to do the more exotic and extensive braids. I practiced every day and had a blast with them. It’s something I love doing with them now that they are all teenagers. We have had some great times watching YouTube together or just talking, while I do their hair
Well this warms my heart!
Bird identification
I don't like to brag, but I could usually identify whether something was a bird or not even before the pandemic.
"yep that's definitely a bird of some kind"
"Not hotdog"
The Merlin app for the win’
The Merlin app is the BOMB. It's really perks up our hikes.
Birds are now my main hobby. My third year and I’m at almost 370 species. Had barely any interest before
What's your max in a day? I'm at 26. Desperate to get a bald eagle.
78 is my best big day so far. Bald eagles are great! They’re also everywhere. If you have the eBird app, you can see where they’ve been logged most recently via the “explore” tab.
Ditto. Diagnosed ptsd a few months prior to crazy Australian lockdowns, but I too got well into bird watching. Really peaceful. Enjoy!
Yep. I never saw myself as a bird person ever.
The pandemic improved my gardening. We're now growing figs, pomegranates, passionfruit, and melons.
It all started as a pandemic boredom thing and I tried growing cucamelons because they looked cool, a gateway plant if you will. It soon spiraled out of control because they were easy and fun to grow and were pretty tasty as well and next thing you know I was growing 70lbs of tomatoes in a season and turning it into tomato sauce. Soon after I moved into canning that sauce and also turning it into pizza sauce and baking my own pizzas. At my lowest point I was at a pizza every two days habit. I started needing to grow more and can more to get the same kind of high and experimented with harder stuff like brandy peaches, salsa's, and I even canned homemade mincemeat from all my green tomatoes. I have no plans or ambitions to break this addiction! I can stop when I want to!
> At my lowest point I was at a pizza every two days habit Are you sure that's a "low point?"
Now that's impressive. I wish I could have done that. I just decided to try my hand at gardening and his year.
Pro tip: most fruiting trees are at their lowest prices in January.
I really mastered the arts of depression and anxiety.
Haha, I'm so talented in those, I picked up those skills long before the pandemic. Everyone else was bitching about lockdowns, and for me nothing changed at all other than having to wear a mask at the grocery store.
I didn't master anything, but I learned that there's a rare advantage of chronic anxiety: you tend to handle the worst-case scenario better than your peers because you're the only one expecting it. Doesn't make it worth it for the other 999/1000 times it doesn't turn out that bad, but, y'know, might as well look at the bright side.
If you imagine the worst and it actually happens, you've lived it twice -Micheal J Fox. I tell myself this several times a day. Sometimes it works. Magnesium and CBD do too.
If imagining the worst-case scenario wasn't an automatic thing for me every time, I would certainly choose not to. I gotta try that LSD experiment to re-wire my brain. 😆
I was running 24/7 pessimism for over a decade. It's a self fulfilling prophecy and a knife without a handle. And a habit, not a curse. Mushrooms are decriminalized where I'm at. Twice a year and I'm good to go. It kills ~70% of the depression and virtually all anhedonia. I've been rewiring a clinical issue, seems like the right protocol might do the same for software issues.
I can tell within the first 5 minutes of watching, whether a TV show is going to be good or not.
Watch the expanse that first episode IS BORING rest of the show is honestly the best realistic sci fi there is
Big expanse fan and this is so spot on. Starts so unappealing. Gee the books are good as well
[удалено]
That is so cool!! Congratulations!!
I found out I’m a good eater. I’d be chuffed to test out your bakes.
And I watched 20 seasons of the British Baking show and didn’t bake a thing🤷🏼♀️
Wow, that is so so so fantastic, I'm so happy for you!!! Let's get you even more business, where are you and what is your business name??
I got comfortable with showing my face on zoom
Bet your number of subs went up.
Damn you went there.
I learned that using a Coleman camping lamp (electric, not gas) works better than a ring lamp to light you up beautifully without causing that tell-tale ring reflection on your glasses. I also learned to look in the camera, not the eyes on screen, to simulate eye contact. I've never been diagnosed with anything but I HATE making eye contact IRL, so this has been a blessing.
Learned to sew. Had a sewing machine and thought I would do my bit and sewed a few masks for family and friends. Now I almost exclusively make clothes for myself, occasionally family. Last year I made a dress that I wore to a wedding.
Same. Throw in Hamilton on Disney+ and discovering Bernadette Banner, and I now also do historical hand-sewing. I've lost count of how many linen shirts and shifts I've made in the last 4 years.
Emergency medical reviews. It was my first year as a doctor and I was allocate to the COVID ward due to staff furloughing. The emergency medical and ICU team weren't allowed to attend emergency calls on the COVID ward to prevent spread, so myself and the nurses, many who were also grad nurses, managed them on our own. I'm still unexpectedly comfortable at managing medical emergencies.
Thank you for all the work you did during the early days of the pandemic/now. I’m alive because of doctors and nurses who were willing to fight against the unknown for me.
Endurance sports… I never really did much cardio, just lifted weights… but now I’m an avid cyclist and runner
Me too 🙌🙌🙌, if one good thing came out of the pandemic, it’s that I think I’ve found a lifelong passion
Napping. Now a Ninja at it.
Cycling. I mean, I always knew how to ride a bike, and I enjoyed it. But I went from a lazy, out of shape schlub in his mid 40's to being a fit dad who is able to easily ride 100-150 km a day in his late 40's.
Calligraphy. Practiced for hours while listening to podcasts
Tie dye lol
Beer Brewing. Was bored at the start of Covid and decided I needed a new hobby. Got pretty good at it and now make a new beer every 2 or 3 months.
I got carried away with mine, I had hundreds of litres on the go at any given time. I really enjoyed making it, no so much drinking it, so it was getting out of hand... and I got really fat. I don't do it anymore. Bit of a shame, really.
Only do 5 gallons per batch and bottle it in 22oz bottles. I give the 22s to my friends,family, coworkers, clients, etc. and they love it. Only bottle 1 or 2 growlers for myself out every batch and share the rest. Love when I give a 22 to somebody like my kids Soccer Coach and they tell me my beer was great.
Learned not wearing pants at home is fun!
This is the way
Don't know if it's a skill but I became more open minded with people because I finally took courage to engage with online players during pandemic. Talking to people around the world made me realise my religion was causing me a lot of judgements on others.
This is awesome.
Proud of you!
Colorguard, I saw videos on my instagram of girls spinning flags so I took my broom stick tied a shirt around it like a flag and taught myself how to spin. Later on in like July I got to experience spinning an actual flag and ended up getting my own solo.
Painting with watercolors. Never really tried the medium before and fell in love. Now my work is in a local gallery, and I recently won my first award for a landscape painting I did.
Smiling with my eyes
Or as Tyra would say, smizing.
Had a mental breakdown at work (grocery clerk) and now I'm on meds. So uh. Stress management I guess
The shit that grocery workers went through is I unreal. In my area, they really saw the worst of humanity.
I found myself laid off from my engineering job. I took a terrible, part-time, seasonal job with my dad's company to bridge the gap. I ended up solving a bunch of his problems so he replaced his manager with me. It turns out I'm a pretty good manager. Working on my MBA now.
may be silly but I learned that is ok to stop a movie or episode halfway and go to bed or go do something else, I don't have to finish it if am not feeling it or if I'm tired and want to sleep. also learned that my naps are consistently 3 hours long
The subreddit I like have a lot of user made content. So I bought some simple editing software and started to foll around. People seemed to enjoy it so I did more and got better. Then I bought an Adobe suite and learned premiere and photoshop. I'm nto pro bit getting better. Again the subreddit I make these content seem to like it.
To become completely invisible in public No one notice me until I make my presence know
I taught myself how to nap for 15-30 minutes at a time (depending on how long I felt like I could be MIA), without setting an alarm, never oversleeping, and waking up feeling refreshed. Best skill ever, especially since I sleep like shit at night.
I can bake bagels and bagel balls from scratch.
Drawing. I'm certainly nowhere near the best, but I'm still a lot better than I previously thought.
How to really love myself.
Underrated skill
Oil painting. I’ve always been into art but never tried it until I was stuck working from home for a month. Turns out I like it better as a medium and I’m pretty good at it.
Accepting my mediocrity.
Nothing. You’d think I would have done something productive, but I didn’t. The only thing I improved on is how to better deal with sitting around. To quote one of my favorite movies “In training I’ve whiled away an hour in 26 minutes flat.”
Being alone
Friends. Never had any from grade 7 until almost my 40th birthday. Joined a running group and made better friends than I've ever had before. We see eachother weekly for a run but have a chat group that doesn't go a day without some sort of random question or chat. We've been to baseball games together, we have a Christmas and summer party, I've been to peoples birthday parties, watched their dog, helped them move, borrowed random things. We have inside jokes and cheer eachother on as we run various races. I've lived in the same small town for almost 20 years and before I made running friends it felt like I could die and no one local would attend the funeral, now the streets and areas of my town have friends who live there and coming back to our house makes me feel like the town is mine instead of just where I live.
Full blown alcoholism
I'm really sorry to hear. Take care of yourself. There is help to stop if you are ready.
Explosive mechanics, brushed up on my chem, and how to use an iron. All I wanted was to make a steel ball with a switch to release a big bang and smoke. I learned how.
video games
Oh gosh. I broke out so many old games. I forgot how much I dig Banjo and Kazooie
I picked up disc golf as a hobby and fell in love with it. I've played ultimate forever and used to make fun of people I knew that played haha. Ultimate was canceled for a while, and I still wanted to sling plastic with friends. I wasn't planning on getting into it until I absolutely piped a drive that was a tap in birdie, been hooked since.
Cooking. It’s a valuable skill everyone should have. It saves you money and impresses everyone… especially the ladies 😏
math
Couponing.
Anxiety and Depression
Identifying bullshit when I hear it!
being alone. I like it now.
Knitting
I was already a pretty competent bike tech. But you know how when you're ok at something, you get even better, and look back and go "wow I knew *nothing*". That's what happened to me during the bike shortage. I would buy bikes on marketplace that needed some work, fix them up, and sell them for a profit. I learned so much crap out of necessity. So many sizing standards. So many procedures.
I got into cardio and working out and keept doing it ever since, i started reading a lot and discovered that i actually hate clubing. Never done it again since
Making decent meals from whatever I have on hand.
I can cook like a mf now
I learned how to brew kombucha Made a ton of great flavors. Mint blueberry, carrot turmeric, spicy pineapple
Cooking. Not unexpected, because what else would I do. But I've gone from making eggs to hvaing run a pop up restuarant.
Working on my car, oil changes, brakes and tires. Even other stuff like changing wiper motor or power distribution box. There was a whole period where i google’d and youtube’d every repair my car and house needed
The only time working on my bmw actually helped keep me sane
Speaking up about my mental health. I was definitely more quiet about it before the pandemic, but now I’m more open to those conversations because it really opened my eyes on how many people struggled too.
I'm a domiciliary caregiver so I didn't stop working throughout the pandemic. But I did pick up extra qualifications in autism, dementia care and end of life care in my free time, which has come in useful.
Pet grooming... left a pet daycare/boarding facility in March 2020, started at a pet grooming salon as a bather in July 2020. Four years later, I'm opening my own pet grooming salon in a new state. I started the business from scratch doing housecall pet grooms and grooming in my kitchen in the winter/on my patio in the summer
Cutting hair (with clippers and scissors).
How much I enjoy being by myself.
That my own cooking is better than most restaurants!
I used to eat out 5 days a week. I tried making my favorite restaurant meals. Some of them came out OK, but I was able to tune them so they were better and better. Now, I think some of my cooking is better than what I was getting in my favorite restaurants. But some meals never really worked at home. I keep trying! The "trying" is kind of fun.
[удалено]
Your comment is exactly the same as one just above. If you are truly teaching your kids, maybe brush up on plagiarism and why it won't help them succeed.
I think they're both bot accounts
I finally learned how to gift wrap
Beauty stuff. Now I can do my own nails, eyelashes, hair, etc.
Sports betting
Had plenty of time to learn a second language.
Playing ukulele.
Running Zoom and the Camera. And, getting used to talking all over the world on Zoom. I now have the world time zones pasted all around my office. Lets see, if its Noon here, its 500PM in London and 0200AM in Sydney.
Crochet - my neighbor was sitting outside crocheting and I stopped over to chat. She handed me a hook and yarn and showed me how to chain. Now, I'm making blankets and hats and can read patterns.
I’d say becoming a better cook. Having all the extra time to scroll on pinterest and watch youtube definitely helped with finding delicious recipes and was definitely worth my time
Finding solitude blissful AGAIN
Cooking. I learned cooking while on house quarantine
I watched a shit ton of cooking shows on YouTube. I am a moderate cook but I still need more experience.
Wrote some short stories.
Bagpiping
Training my dog and taking care of fish. Never had more time to focus on animals since people weren't an option!
I'm a nudist and love gardening just like my neighbours.
Squinching my eyes to fake a smile under my mask. Such an added bonus to not dying of COVID. I never stopped wearing mask.😌
Became fluent in Spanish, and made it ~40% through Chinese.
Learning languages, i thought i'd never learn a new language
I had really bad arachnophobia to the point I would have a freeze response and nearly pass out. My covid hobby was to get over that by learning everything I could about them. I purposely joined any spider-related sub reddit I could find so they would start showing up on my feed and I would get used to looking at them without feeling dizzy. Plus there were so many comments from spider lovers I would read that helped me see them in a more positive light. I also started watching a lot of YouTubers. Eventually in December of 2020 I bought my first baby tarantula to take care of so I could start the process of being around a live spider and understand their movements/reflexes better (the sling I chose was the size of a small bead and was a very slow grower). Now, I not only have multiple spider pets of multiple different species, but I also actually get excited when I see spiders in the wild and will often protect them from getting squashed by people. I can also usually tell the differences between males and females depending on the species and have been invited to my son’s school to talk to students about spiders. I no longer have a freeze response and instead have even picked up jumping spiders or the occasional grass spider on purpose to relocate them. I am really proud of how far I have come to overcome that fear. :)
Disc golf. My buddies and I went out almost every day
Fishing!! Hook, line, and sinker.
I can brew a damn good beer
Does working 60+ hours a week while attending school count as a skill? Because that’s what I did during the pandemic. I did take a year long break from school, but that was a medical leave of absence, so it didn’t exactly leave me with much in the way of free time, especially since said absence did not excuse me from work.
Iaido, it’s a katana art form where you draw your sword fast and precisely
Made me comfortable to use drive thru
I practice to cook steaks. I only been to a steakhouse once since the end of the pandemic.
Speeding on the freeway by alot
Crochet!! I found a love for yarn lol
solving a rubik's cube. taught my kids. last week my 6 year old was in a school talent show hula hooping while solving one. fun to watch, i picked it up as a hobby to do while on calls while working from home.
Honestly, making and keeping online friends. I met a wonderful person in a country far away and we've been chatting ever since. We'll meet up IRL someday when the stars align
I got into game development. I had experience with various programming languages but never could wrap my head around game dev. The pandemic gave me the time to delve into it enough to at least get a grip on the fundamentals.
Painting miniatures and got back into sculpting.
anxiety
I got better at using my left hands for things i do with my rights. I sometimes use my left hand to brush my teeth or to hold chopsticks with and my friends get surprised/impressed when i do
Online shopping!
Making bars of “zucchini cheese” from scratch, because the pandemic effectively killed off the last company making a cheese substitute I wasn’t allergic to, and I was out of choices.
Hating people.
soldering, fixed some older gaming consoles. Good times. I'm more confident in electronics disassembly now. ps2 controllers suck
Whoever in the right mind decided to make the PS2 controllers pressure sensitive should’ve been fired.
My job continued as normal during the pandemic, so I had no time to pick up new skills. I did draw more though.
Learned that I really love working in medicine. I went back to school and became a CNA during the pandemic.
I built a wood fired pottery kiln that fires up to 2400F and pumps out beautiful pots. Made work and fired it every other week for months.
I learned to make good plasticine figures. 700 figures say something in my opinion
I wasn't really interested in photography or filming before the pandemic but during it, I learned how to edit photos and videos.
I learned how to 3d print and make things so much things
Working remotely. I found I'm actually more productive when I'm at home and not distracted by a busy office setting.
I’ve kept several plants alive since at least 2021. Since then I’ve now grown dozens of things from seed, including about half of the over 100 things around my home inside and out. I fucking love seeds now. So much cheaper than buying (then killing) a plant. For the price of 1 plant I can grow as many as I like! And I’m learning how to collect seeds!
Developing C-41 film quickly with a pretty minimal setup that didn’t involve getting a sous vide, and the delusion that I can repair any old broken camera I get off the internet. Also, bad spending habits.
Depression, anxiety, constant fear about my family, guilt that I'm not with them, envying other people that can afford living in their own country and having places they can call home
drinkin
Being depressed
Target muscle building …only my right forearm though.
An increased level of health anxiety I never imagined possible.
After being forced to wear masks, I slowly learned to wear a condom as time went on.
Not giving a shit anymore
Identifying what foods have soy in them. The Vaccine booster gave me a soy allergy.
Nice /s. But really, I am so sorry to hear that, and sadly, I can relate. My twin and I got covid, and developed a shellfish allergy that makes us have severe dizziness/migrainous dizziness.