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The more I think about it the more I'm restrainedly panicking about going to the in-person course that starts on Monday in Turku.
It's just in the summer the pandemic had cooled down so much that I felt like I had been crazily over-cautious to turn down the early spring one. We always knew to expect a second wave in the winter too so it's not like I didn't know about it, but I guess the lower background anxiety had an effect. And of course since the Clusterfuck where I didn't accept two unsolicited job offers that I never received because I never knew that you had to manually notify the employment bureau of change of address and I also didn't even know that having my CV on their website COULD result in unsolicited job offers for jobs I hadn't applied for, I haven't been getting any unemployment which has been like an entire YEAR now because of how long it's taking to do this, and IN SPITE OF THESE CIRCUMSTANCES because I missed (more accurately, lost in the dead-MIL-bankruptcy-panic-ADHD-broken-house-fugue last winter) the first appeal period, there is no legal redress except attending an employment bureau approved event or just... getting a job somewhere... which for the most part are both... things that would mean going out in public places that are (still somewhat) crowded around all the idiots who aren't wearing masks in public in spite of the 'wear masks in public' recommendation.
Now, it's not so dire that this course is my ONLY option, because I could probably get a job or work practice independently of it at one of the local stores that offered me the unsolicited job offers in the first place; and failing that the town government has some programs that they can register unemployed people in, sort of work-for-the-city-gov't programs I think. But both of those are inferior options in every sense except the PANDEMIC, HELLO?!? sense for a huge number of reasons.
Fun fact: this class is being run under contract from Social Security, a division of the government! Even though right now our entire region is officially under a Work-From-Distance Recommendation that is supposed to apply to every possible situation where you can apply it, particularly for organs of the government, because of how pandemics are bad! But they haven't arranged to work from a distance! According to their information packet they aren't even requiring masks for attendance in spite of the official mask recommendation (this is probably another thing that the constitution of Finland won't allow them to do. Wax was blowing my mind with a lecture on this earlier. A Finnish legal eagle could talk for hours on this crazy subject).
And I really DO want to do this... but I really WANT to do it when it's NOT potentially... very unsafe... to go out and about and do it?
So I changed my mind back and forth (Call them and demand why they aren't making modifications given the recent acceleration of the pandemic in our region, Call them and withdraw AGAIN, Call them and cry?, Don't call at all) literally about six times this afternoon and I was too stressed to even take a benzo for fear I would get too relaxed to make an intelligent decision (?). (Translation: to worry any more?) My sister-in-law pointed out there haven't been any cases tied to the buses so far though, which is true, the buses aren't actually that bad apparently; maybe they have adequate ventilation by design or something? And of course they're not usually all that crowded on average... I'll go Monday, unless I find the bus full of people when I get to it, and then once I've seen the arrangements and talked to them I guess I'll decide about the future after that.
Our region has had about 50 cases per 100k people over the last two weeks, but it's fallen slightly last week versus the one before that. Our town now has a cumulative total of 17 (out of around 15k people) while Turku has 950-something (out of around 193k), and the city center of Turku is, obviously, the biggest one in the region so going there right now isn't a great idea.
It's just in the summer the pandemic had cooled down so much that I felt like I had been crazily over-cautious to turn down the early spring one. We always knew to expect a second wave in the winter too so it's not like I didn't know about it, but I guess the lower background anxiety had an effect. And of course since the Clusterfuck where I didn't accept two unsolicited job offers that I never received because I never knew that you had to manually notify the employment bureau of change of address and I also didn't even know that having my CV on their website COULD result in unsolicited job offers for jobs I hadn't applied for, I haven't been getting any unemployment which has been like an entire YEAR now because of how long it's taking to do this, and IN SPITE OF THESE CIRCUMSTANCES because I missed (more accurately, lost in the dead-MIL-bankruptcy-panic-ADHD-broken-house-fugue last winter) the first appeal period, there is no legal redress except attending an employment bureau approved event or just... getting a job somewhere... which for the most part are both... things that would mean going out in public places that are (still somewhat) crowded around all the idiots who aren't wearing masks in public in spite of the 'wear masks in public' recommendation.
Now, it's not so dire that this course is my ONLY option, because I could probably get a job or work practice independently of it at one of the local stores that offered me the unsolicited job offers in the first place; and failing that the town government has some programs that they can register unemployed people in, sort of work-for-the-city-gov't programs I think. But both of those are inferior options in every sense except the PANDEMIC, HELLO?!? sense for a huge number of reasons.
Fun fact: this class is being run under contract from Social Security, a division of the government! Even though right now our entire region is officially under a Work-From-Distance Recommendation that is supposed to apply to every possible situation where you can apply it, particularly for organs of the government, because of how pandemics are bad! But they haven't arranged to work from a distance! According to their information packet they aren't even requiring masks for attendance in spite of the official mask recommendation (this is probably another thing that the constitution of Finland won't allow them to do. Wax was blowing my mind with a lecture on this earlier. A Finnish legal eagle could talk for hours on this crazy subject).
And I really DO want to do this... but I really WANT to do it when it's NOT potentially... very unsafe... to go out and about and do it?
So I changed my mind back and forth (Call them and demand why they aren't making modifications given the recent acceleration of the pandemic in our region, Call them and withdraw AGAIN, Call them and cry?, Don't call at all) literally about six times this afternoon and I was too stressed to even take a benzo for fear I would get too relaxed to make an intelligent decision (?). (Translation: to worry any more?) My sister-in-law pointed out there haven't been any cases tied to the buses so far though, which is true, the buses aren't actually that bad apparently; maybe they have adequate ventilation by design or something? And of course they're not usually all that crowded on average... I'll go Monday, unless I find the bus full of people when I get to it, and then once I've seen the arrangements and talked to them I guess I'll decide about the future after that.
Our region has had about 50 cases per 100k people over the last two weeks, but it's fallen slightly last week versus the one before that. Our town now has a cumulative total of 17 (out of around 15k people) while Turku has 950-something (out of around 193k), and the city center of Turku is, obviously, the biggest one in the region so going there right now isn't a great idea.
