When this COVID-19 outbreak started getting serious in the US a few weeks back, my wife and I quickly came to the realization that we were both in very “non-recession-proof” industries. She has been at the same role with an oil and gas company for the last 9 years, doing geotech / GIS work. When oil prices cratered at the end of 2015, the company that she works for had to do massive layoffs, just like many others in the…
When I think back to the “Great Recession”, I find it hard to remember how I was feeling about it while it was happening. At the time that the recession began in early 2008, my life had already been turned on its head. I had moved from Pittsburgh where I had lived my entire life down to Northern Virginia to move in with my then-girlfriend. We were expecting our first child in May of that year. I was in a…
As with most everyone else in the county / state / world, the last 10 days have been completely alien for us. We never really went out as a family often anyways, other than to visit family or go on hikes, so this social distancing / almost-lockdown is not a big deal. Also, I have been used to working remotely – my current employer allows us in-office folks to work remote 2x per week and we even had a 3…
