Just before we were all forced into “quarantine” with self-isolation and stay-at-home orders, I had received an email from Amazon about a book on my wish list which was available for $1.99 on Kindle - ironically, I did buy the e-book of Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism.
Coupled with recently reading Brian Grazer’s Face to Face, it seemed like a great time to take at least some break from the technology that seems to dominate our lives.
And then “stay at home,” “self-isolation,” and “social distancing” become three of the most common phrases we hear.
Facebook messenger had a great app for kids to be able to connect and play games with each other, since they’re going equally as crazy being cooped up, like the rest of us.
People are finding all sorts of ways to connect with one another from a distance. Zoom-fueled happy hours where everyone gets together for an online meeting and their drink of choice - spending time together without being together.
I think that’s amazing.
People are staying remarkably connected in a time of isolation and distance.
That’s a new approach to happy hour.
So why not try a new approach to other things? Do a Zoom (if that’s the correct jargon) or Google Hangout (in all honesty, I’ve never used Zoom and have only heard that it’s being used to spy on us, so that’s the extent of my experience with it) and play a board game with some friends.
After college, a group of us used to play poker at a local bar, until we realized that if we all wanted to play together, we should just go to one of our apartments and play poker. This was our Thursday night tradition for years. As we all got better jobs, moved further away, and had kids, it is no longer “Thursday Night Poker,” but instead, more like “Once, Maybe Twice a Year, Poker.”
So I had an idea. I thought of stories of people playing chess by mail and started thinking about what I could do to interact with a bunch of the old poker buddies.
I dealt out 9 poker hands, a flop, turn, and river, and texted 9 of the guys from our formerly-regular poker game.
Welcome to the COVID-19 2020 Quarantine Text Message Poker Invitational
I’m acting as the tournament director, and running a single-table tournament for a bunch of friends who can’t otherwise get together. We started on Friday. It’s now Sunday, and we have dealt the flop on hand number 3. Needless to say, it’s a slow-moving game. But it got 10 of us hanging out, albeit via a text message thread.
Try a new approach to something old. You might just have some fun with it, and connect with people in ways you never realized you could in the current situation.
It’s like the higher ups at work said in some of our all-company calls in the past few weeks - have fun. There’s a whole lot of negativity out there right now, but we can still find ways to have some fun.