So in February I had a business trip in San Diego. I stayed at a nice hotel for three days, had great weather, and my employer footed the bill - all good stuff. The first morning my internal clock went off at 4AM, and after staring at the ceiling for 15 minutes I decided to get out of bed. It was still pitch black out and I wasn’t ready for an all-on light show in my room, so I groped around and found the clothes I had on the day before and recycled them. Since the hotel restaurant didn’t open for breakfast until 6AM, I decided to get some work done. With only the small desk lap on, I stumbled around the hotel room looking for my black computer bag. Laptop was found and without uttering too many four-letter words I was able to log onto the hotel’s wifi system. Then my next task was to negotiate my way through the myriad of security warnings and trick questions to ensure I was who I said I was. But yet another example of the new normal. I’m now into my company’s online work environment and I quickly get into my typical mind numbing, heads down work zone. I come up for air and notice it’s 6:15AM – time for breakfast. I grab my wallet and room key and head out the door. As I’m leaving I check to make sure I have a shirt and pants on. That would be embarrassing if I missed that, right? I go to the counter where they seat you and in a happy to be in warm SoCal tone I say, “One Please.” As I’m having my coffee, I notice I’m getting strange looks from the other patrons coming in. I can’t imagine anyone is remembering yesterday’s clothes and just let it go. I finish breakfast and head back to my hotel room. I walk into the room and stroll past the full-length mirror on the sliding door of the closet. I get a quick view of my head, actually my hair that almost caused me to trip over the bed. You see over the years the once proud legion of hair on my head has deserted me. The mob that’s left is a bunch of renegades that have minds of their own. So during breakfast, at the public restaurant, I was sporting a hair do that any punk rock band would have been proud of.
Moving forward, I now work from home “WFH” like many. My laptop is now my everything. I do admin work on it. I do calls from it. I watch seminars on it. I have internal and customer meetings on it using video tools like ZOOM and WebEx. I currently have a piece of tape covering my laptop camera. I’d like to say it’s a privacy thing, but the real situation is that like my San Diego trip, I now have trouble separating coffee time from hygiene time from work time from remember to put my clothes on time. That and I have not shaved in about 20 days. I once upon a time tried to hike the Appalachian Trail. My new trail name will have to be, ”Kringle” as in Kris. So the camera stays off for now…so as not to scare people.
What I’ve found helps make WFH less morose is to call friends and catch up. So if you used to call folks once a month, call them once a week. That and I’m instituting a new weekly ritual. It’s called the Friday Night Oil Can…in honor of Fosters Lager. It’s a large con call to get caught up, but no discussions about work. Stay Healthy.
