WFH

It has been almost exactly one year since the former CEO of my place of work advised that we would be “trialing” a work-at-home model due to the rapidly increasing spread of the pandemic. I was secretly delighted. Working from home (or “WFH” as it is commonly abbreviated, so ubiquitous has it become for so many) has throughout my work career always been a privilege, something that felt almost sneaky, like skipping school, or taking a side trip to the coffee shop when you had only planned to step out for a dentist appointment.

As a single mother, WFH would have been a disaster and had never crossed my mind, but once my children were old enough for school, I began harboring thoughts of dreamy days in my wool socks and yoga pants, forgoing the ritual of makeup and having to pack my lunch. As time went on, the companies I worked for began to adapt to the times and would allow for WFH under nebulous rules such as “snow days” or “extended doctor’s appointments” (where the thought process was it was either dangerous or a time waster to make the commute into the office). Occasionally a bold co-worker would ask if they could work from home two days a week and be given the “okay” while the rest of us pondered how they got away with it and had visions of their binging on daytime television, taking long baths and sleeping past eight instead of being glued to their computer screens like the rest of us in the office.

My generation grew up without the technology that makes WFH completely seamless, outside of the in-person interaction. In our first jobs, we had bosses (that’s what we called them, not “managers” but “bosses”) stopping by our desks to check on what we were doing – where is that file and when will you have time to discuss this project? We sat in open-style cubes where anyone could see you picking a pimple on your face, surfing the internet (once it became available) or could smell your egg-salad sandwich unwrapped by your keyboard. If you needed to make a private call you had to step out in the hall or find an empty conference room. You wore uncomfortable shoes you kicked off under your desk and you kept essentials such as clear nail polish for a run in your nylon, a chocolate bar or two, and deodorant in your bottom desk drawer.

WFH full time initially felt like I had landed on the moon. I felt floaty, as if untethered by anything or anybody, just the work itself. My stress level went down measurably. I am not sure if it was the fact of how much more comfortable I was in my own skin, not having to “show up” like I always had, Erin, the working woman, presenting myself in the work image I had finely honed over the past 27 years, or if it was something else, such as the extra two hours of time I now had with not commuting, or the elimination of the effort it has taken me my whole life to morph my introversion into something else so I could succeed at work.

Over this past year I have grown weary of the same routine and the same look of each room of my house and the same staring into the fridge deciding what to eat for lunch and the same exercise equipment in our home gym and the same people’s faces over and over (our four children living with us in different stages, two at a time, sometimes three, our dog Teeka, my husband Jay – although his face I particularly love). I think my innate preference for being home in my own surroundings, and my love of domestic chores such as cooking and cleaning and tidying my bed works as both a blessing and a curse with WFH. On the one hand I have access to and control of my own environment every hour of every day. On the other hand, I am not exposed to anything or anybody new and I allow myself to get sucked into the work itself, like tumbling down a well, most days of the week. I have learned to pry myself away and endeavor to change minute things, habits and patterns just to get through one more day.

One morning I’ll go for a walk before turning on my computer. On another day, I’ll go grocery shopping at 5pm when normally I’d go on the weekend. I’ll do yoga at 10am or call a friend with no discussion topic at hand, (this reminds me of middle school when you’d call your best friend, winding the long telephone cord around your arm as you sat cross-legged on the floor – what are you doing? Nothing, what are you doing? Nothing.)

Or I’ll start a loaf of sourdough bread (that process can take over 24 hours) or pick tomatoes in the garden or sit on the back porch for ten minutes in the sun, observing my socks and my socks inside my slippers. My slippers that I now wear every day. These are all sanity checks that made each month of 2020 slip by, until winter came, and I just kept drinking more hot tea, periodically working a puzzle, and finding more Netflix shows to watch.

I never would have imagined I’d be here, a year later, still WFH.

I must go into the office tomorrow for an interview as we are replacing an employee who left for another position outside the company. I have been in the office perhaps three other times in the past year, and each time I feel like I did the first time I walked into the office for my own first interview, almost three years ago this March. It’s all new territory, and I am not sure what to expect.