I was going to write about this yesterday, but I was concerned that people might think I was pulling an April Fool’s prank, so I decided to wait until today instead…

On March 31, 2020 at 4:56 PM PDT, I felt my first high-rise earthquake.

There were some pretty severe earthquakes in Ridgecrest, CA nine months ago that should’ve been felt from Las Vegas, but I happened to be in Re­don­do Beach at that time, and I was in Tempo‘s PUBG team house rather than at home in my condo. There had been nothing too noticeable since then, until two days ago when I heard my building creaking and crackling.

For those who don’t know, I live in a high-rise condominimum complex on the Las Vegas Strip. I live in one of the upper units, putting me around 400 feet above ground level. High-rise buildings on the Pacific Coast have some pretty good anti-earthquake measures, but that doesn’t stop them from making discomforting sounds and swaying back and forth for a while.

After I noticed that my building was indeed dancing, the first thing that popped into my mind was whether Southern California was hit by “The Big One,” a nickname for the long-overdue catastrophic earthquake that’s an­tic­i­pated to cause $200 billion in damages along the San Andreas fault. Even though Las Vegas is hundreds of miles away from SoCal, we’re still going to experience some mild shaking when The Big One hits—though with no damage, obviously.

I messaged one of my co-workers a minute after I confirmed that there was indeed an earthquake happening somewhere, and asked him to check Twitter to see if our good friends in California were sending out distress signals. In the meantime, I was still scratching my head in confusion, wondering why my building was still rocking back and forth, and concluding that earthquakes are a lot spookier in high-rise buildings than I thought, because it takes a while for the building to become stationary again.

Not long after, my co-worker got back to me with an update from Twitter… apparently I had felt an earthquake that was epicentered in Idaho. … Idaho?

At this point, there were two possibilities. The first was that there was also an earthquake somewhere else at the very exact time, and it was just a massive coincidence that I had felt that different earthquake at the same time that a fairly severe one hit Idaho. The second possibility was that “a fairly severe one” was an understatement, and Idaho was basically liquefied mush at this point, because the earthquake was actually so strong that it was able to be felt from about 600 miles away.

I dug into it a bit afterwards, and apparently, I was wrong in both predictions. The United States Geological Survey did report an earthquake in Idaho, but it was a magnitude 6.5 epicentered 70 kilometers west of Challis.

Now wondering whether or not I was having hallucinations, I did my own searching on Twitter by querying the keyword “earthquake” and restricting geotagging to the Las Vegas Valley. I was relieved when I realized that I wasn’t the only one who felt it—other people on the Strip and in the downtown area also reported feeling the earthquake. (And of course, there was also the fair share of people claiming that we were lying just for the attention—which I don’t blame them for, because I agree that it seems pretty impossible that we felt that Idaho earthquake.)

I imagine that this is just going to end up being a part of high-rise life that I didn’t account for until just now. Similar to how a flick of the wrist while holding a whip can cause the loop of the whip to reach the speed of sound and create a sonic boom, it appears like even the slightest ground motion can send the top of a high-rise building rocking back and forth for a minute or two.

At the beginning of last week, I wrote a blog post about how I discovered that I had been inadvertently selfish my entire life, and how the COVID-19 pandemic opened my eyes to empathy—not quite literally the concept itself, but rather, the fact that just because you’re aware of a concept doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve fully manifested it into your life. Since then, a whole lot more has happened.

I’m glad that people around me seem to be responding accordingly. I found out yesterday that the homeowners’ association of my condo taped a red “social distancing line” on the floor of the main entrance to protect our concierge and security staff—which was hilarious, but also gave me faith that the HOA was taking this seriously and keeping our workers safe.

So, with these recent developments and stronger responses from the community, there are two more things that I learned as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

1. Apparently I’ve basically already been self-quarantining my entire life.

   It seems like everyone is complaining about having to make drastic lifestyle changes and how they are bored out of their minds… but I feel like I’m just living my normal life. I’m almost sort of jealous that people seem to be finding unity in struggling through self-isolation, while I can’t join in on the fun because this actually isn’t a struggle to me.

   I also seem to be exceptionally well-prepared for self-isolation, because I didn’t have to go out and “stock up” or “prepare” for anything. While other people are cluelessly going out to buy egregious amounts of toilet paper and bottled water, I already have a stockpile of toilet paper (I take left­over toilet paper rolls from hotels I stay at, and I travel a lot), and I already have a few extra water filters in my cabinet. The only thing I don’t have is frozen or canned food, but I have enough faith in the government that I won’t actually starve to death, and if I get close and every single grocery store and restaurant is shut down, then there will be alternative methods available to get my hands on food.

   Anyway, I keep myself busy and don’t really have free time, and it’s remained that way throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. While people are sitting on their couches mind-numbingly watching hours upon hours of Netflix, I’m just continuing on with what I normally do on a regular day—just with an elimination of the very little human-to-human, in-person contact that I did get before.

   On a mildly related note, a lot of people who have a ton of extra free time now have been reaching out to me to reconnect—people who I didn’t realize even remembered that I still existed. They just assume that, because they have a lot more free time, I do too… which isn’t exactly the case. But, of course, I always say that, if you are important enough to someone, they will always make time for you, no matter how busy they are. My own philosophy is being put to the test as more and more old familiar names are popping up in my messages…

2. Other people now understand why I take a lower paycheck to have a fun job where I can work from home.

   I’ve generally always been the type of person who hasn’t really placed “making money” at a very high priority, but when I decided on my full-time career, I decided to take a lower-paying job at a young company within an unstable and new industry just so I could do what I had fun doing. Prior to esports and gaming, I was on track to going to law school and becoming a criminal prosecutor—which, again, is one of the lower-paying legal jobs, but it still would’ve equipped me with a Juris Doctorate and made me a barred lawyer.

   Instead, I believe that doing fun work, having control over your life, and being able to work from home are extremely underrated com­po­nents of a career. I had the great fortune of finding an opportunity that provided me with all three of those—I get to work in the esports and gaming industry, I determine my own schedule, and I get to work out of my home office.

   Throughout the last five years, I’ve had people regularly question why I am doing the work that I do right now when I could instead go back to school for a few more years, then double or triple my salary. I’ve always explained to them that both the concrete (personal time and mileage ex­penses) and abstract (mental health and well-being) value derived from not having to commute to a physical location is worth far more to me, but people generally think I’m wrong.

   Now that people are forced to work from home, a few are coming back to me to let me know that they now understand why working from home is so amazing.

   I’ve seen people’s commutes range from half an hour to two hours in each direction, and if you account for how much of your life you’re losing to that, it adds up extremely quickly. Some people take public transportation, but others drive, and operating and maintaining a vehicle is usually more expensive than people think.

   Most importantly, not having to force yourself to wake up at a specific time or be bound by someone else’s commands can be a freeing and em­pow­ering experience. There’s a psychological phenomenon called reactance where you experience displeasure when other people tell you to do something, even if you were going to do that task anyway. If you’re particularly prone to reactance, you may notice situations where you were planning on doing something, but if someone happens to tell you to do that thing before you actually get around to doing it, you no longer want to do that task anymore because it feels like you’re only doing it because that other person told you to do it, rather than out of your own free will.

   Reactance can be extremely dangerous for productivity, which is why, when I lead others, I try my best to equip them with the tools and resources they need, then have them come to the conclusion as to what they need to do to achieve our goal. I may nudge them towards my task or create a situation where they will inevitably come to the conclusion that they have to do what I want to do, but the important part here is that they decide on that themselves, and they’re doing it because they want to, not because I told them to.

   If you work when you want from where you want, that’s one of the most powerful ways to increase your self-perception of self-worth, thus leading to much greater confidence. You feel like you’re in control of your life, your attitude and outlook on your future improve, you are more motivated and dedicated to your own tasks, and your productivity skyrockets. It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to put a concrete dollar amount or salary increase in exchange for sacrificing something like this.

   Now that other people are getting a taste of what my everyday life is like, I’ve gotten a lot more acknowledgement for my career choice. I’ve never really been someone to care too much about what others’ think, but it’s still nice to hear from people that I was right all along.

 
Stay at home.

I’m in New Jersey at my cousin’s house for a family event, and when I arrived, I was greeted quite aggressively by their dog, Tinkerbell. She had quite the ferocious yip-yap, but you could easily tell that she was an old dog who had already lived a long life.

When I asked my aunt how old Tinkerbell was, my aunt said that when she moved in with my cousins in New Jersey about ten years ago, Tinkerbell was already about ten, so she suspects Tinkerbell to be about 20 now. I think there might be a miscalculation somewhere in there, because 20 in dog years is astronomically high, but Tinkerbell also looks like she has a good amount of chihuahua in her, and healthy chihuahuas can live to get pretty old.

As you might be able to tell, she wasn’t really the biggest fan of having a camera in her face.

My aunt and uncle—the ones who live in Southern California and own a farm up in the mountains—tried to visit me in Las Vegas yesterday. They hopped on Interstate 15 to drive north towards Las Vegas, but after a few hours, they called me and said that they had to turn around and go back home because of traffic.

A bit confused, I looked at Google Maps and saw deep, dark red blanketing the traffic map of Cajon Pass and Mountain Pass. Even more confused, I searched on Google News for those areas… to discover that they were apparently completely blanketed in snow, and cars weren’t managing to make it through.

The snowstorm was obviously unexpected, because the only snow that I could see out my window was the snow far up in the mountains. But Cajon Pass and Mountain Pass are 3,776 and 4,728 feet in elevation, respectively, so it’s quite a bit higher than the Las Vegas Valley, and thus a whole lot more prone to snowstorms.

I watched a story post of someone I’m following on Instagram who was also making the drive from Southern California back to Las Vegas; she stuck through the drive, and apparently, she left SoCal at around 3 PM and arrived back in Las Vegas at 1 AM the following day.

… That sounds terrifying.

My local post office is the one in downtown Las Vegas, one block away from where South Las Vegas Boulevard turns into North Las Vegas Boulevard. Specifically, the address of my local post office, and my PO box inside of it, is 201 Las Vegas Blvd S # 2222, Las Vegas, NV 89101-5780.

If you ever forget that address, have no fear. Some troll took my PO box and added it on Google Maps as my “corporate office” named “Adam Parkzer.”

Anyway, I just got back from a long string of travel, so naturally, I stopped by the post office to check my PO box to see what I missed while I was gone. The problem was, when I arrived, I noticed that the post office’s doors were chained shut. I figured something had happened on that side of the building and walked around to the other side to take a back entrance directly to the PO box area… but that was locked too. I went around to a third entrance, and noticed a sign—that the post office had temporarily relocated… to the “parking lot.”

Confused, I went back out to the parking lot where I had parked my truck and looked around a bit. I did notice that a big trailer had been added to the parking lot, but I didn’t really find it that interesting, so I had initially disregarded it.

On closer inspection…

Yes, that is indeed the “new” temporary post office. They moved all post office operations, including the PO boxes, into that trailer while the main building was undergoing construction on the upper floors.

I think that is one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen.