Before Covid19

I smile when I hear my friends complain about the trials and tribulations of working at home, as if they are the first to experience it, to live it, to be the pioneers of our generation. I was working from home in the 1990’s as a high tech perk, long before C19 made it a ‘thing’!

For me, working from home was a great benefit, but it takes discipline to stay focused and not wander off to water plants or wash dishes when you take a bathroom break, still dressed in your uniform of PJ’s and slippers, hair and teeth unbrushed.  Some days I’d manage some yoga pants when I went to get coffee or meet a friend for lunch at the local café. Sure, I had the flexibility to attend my children’s school functions and enjoy lunch at home with my husband some days.  I was still tethered to an office, and could see co-workers when I wanted to. It was a home of sorts, a place I belonged. I could “dress up” and go into the office if I wanted to nurture work relationships. ‘Looking good to feel good’. It’s real.

Of course, there’s a dark side.  Baby boomers or Gen X’ers might find themselves overworked and exhausted, unable to disconnect from their work, constantly checking email, eating dinner with a laptop on the table, supporting business calls at 5am for Europe and 9pm for Asia Pacific.  There are no clear boundaries between work and family as we try to do it all, albeit not well.  The time saved from commuting just allows us more time to work.

Mentally you’re tired from having no clear lines between work and home. You feel isolated and alone even when you have conference calls. You’re conversations are instant messages or texts between meetings and assignments.  Communication is more complicated. Are your co-workers awake, shopping, or even looking at their screens during meetings?  You can’t see a reaction, or be sure someone is paying attention. You can’t jump up and draw out the ideas on a whiteboard, handing over the Expo marker when someone has a point to make.

But most of us loved our freedom and the benefit of working alone, until our families joined us and changed everything.

With Covid19

Covid has proven a great opportunity to bring Work-from-Home to Main Street America. No longer tethered to an office, talk of making this change permanent, people have the opportunity to relocate to their dream town. (As long as you’re confined to your own living space and not in the public. The long standing practice of working from the local coffee shop no longer an option.)

For single people, the experience with Covid isn’t too different than before. Add a spouse home with you and the changes are significant but manageable. You probably still work your own schedules, but the house is messier and you may find that you can’t turn work off, which interferes with your relationship. You may feel less stressed due to no commute, but that’s offset with the stress of managing your boundaries. You might be forced to stay home and avoid going out.  Still manageable.

Where I see the largest challenge is families with young children. There is an exponential change in noise level, activity, and mess. Space is a challenge. You need to convert your 3 bedroom, 2 bath house into a We-Work incubator. Each room becomes a separate work space for someone. Some now sleep, shower, go to school, work, and eat all in the same room. And you tiny house people, well, that’s more togetherness than you probably imagined.

And let’s not forget you now need to be a movie producer of some sort. Styling your home, ensuring your background (every room in your house) looks professional, or just clean. Making your bed every morning now becomes essential. You won’t let others see the slob that you are or the pit that you live in. (You know some people are curious, they can’t help themselves.)

During the Covid19 pandemic, parents with young children are doing two jobs – work and home-schooling.  The schooling role is significant. They have to assume the IT role for the teachers at home (helping with Zoom, WebEx, or other tools), be the ‘heavy’ on getting children to stay focused, ensure they sit still for hours, perform yard duty during academic breaks, and be the PE teacher. With playgrounds closed and contact sports (basically all sports) canceled, it’s up to parents to provide fitness programs within your own backyard or inside of the house.

With Covid19, there is no ‘me’ time.  Your kids have minimal social lives.  Your family is together 24/7.  You have to function for work, but you can’t get much quiet time until the kids are asleep, then you work hard to get your tasks done for the day, and exhausted, you fall into bed.

Weekends are better because you can go for a walk, play outside together, but work is always there. You see it every time you go in and out of the room.  Your email calls, just for a minute, then ten, then an hour.  It seems logical to clear your emails now, but they don’t stop. You can’t really finish everything and start fresh the next day.

You tell yourself that you have all this free time. You don’t have to drive to/from work and to/from school. You don’t have extracurricular activities filling up your calendar.  Somehow that time gets filled up with all the new activities necessary with your whole family home every day.

Covid19 has been a savior in forcing people to refocus on family and slow down. People are enjoying spending time together in quiet ways they haven’t in years. More families go on walks, share meals, make dinner together and have fun.  I’d like to think that Millennials and Generation Z are better at boundaries than Baby Boomers and Generation X, who were more likely to be workaholics and mom’s proving themselves.

Work provides individuals with purpose, ways to means, contribution to society and the economy. It is our human basic need to produce, to do something. We accomplish that by being ourselves, separate from being parents, for a brief part of every day, just to be us, to be amazing, to create.  But Covid19 has taken a lot of that away from us, even as it opens up opportunities. What no one envisioned is that you’d get little, to no, ‘me’ time. Trapped in our homes, nowhere to go, no break from responsibilities, we aren’t as efficient or productive as we thought we’d be.  Sitting home noticing the peeling paint, stained hand rails, dirty door jams, and dusty molding some long for the days to return to an office, to not be a wife, not a mother, but just an employee, with real boundaries.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash