WFH — One Year Later
…reflection on the last 365 days…or not.
Today I “celebrate” working from home for the last year. It was a year ago today that my company decided to do a “disaster drill” where everyone would work from home. This was the first challenge to see what meetings and daily office life would be like if we had to be remote.
This drill came the day after three of us had just conducted a three-day, in-person training in a small conference room at a hotel with 35 people who travel as consultants for a living. The three of us talked about how we would conduct the training — we decided not to shake hands with our new friends (We made up new dance moves! Think: Kid n’ Play kick-step where we touched feet instead). We had hand sanitizers on every table and cleaned up the room while wearing rubber gloves. If it was touched by a human, we tossed it. We took our last selfie together, packed up, and went home. We thought it would be a couple of weeks, maybe.
Here we are a year later.
It’s pretty unreal that this much time has passed. I’m grateful to have worked with such a great team that accomplished so much in our WFH time. We figured it out.
What did I learn during this time?
Did I HAVE to learn something?
I’ve been known to say in BC (before covid) times that if I never had to leave my house again, I’d be ok. I’m an introvert masquerading as an extrovert. I feel that this last year I had a better work/life balance than I’ve ever had at any point in my career. Sure, there was some internal pressure to prove my worth as we saw layoffs happening around us. The early covid days, none of us wanted to take PTO because it might be too easy for the company to live without us (plus, where would we go, anyway?). But there was a breaking point where the company stepped in, encouraged us to take PTO, scheduled lunch hours every day when no meeting happened, and really cared about our mental health in many tangible ways.
I don’t have any earth-shattering take-always from the last year. I’m grateful for work, remaining functional, and for not only my health, but the health of those I love. I enjoyed the days when I had lunch on the deck, took a dog for the walk, and saw friends at a safe distance.
I learned I like snow-shoeing, laying in a hammock under a tree and re-classifying what “date night” means.
Do I wish I would come out of quarantine with a ripped body? Sure. Do I wish we would have gotten to go on our honeymoon cruise to France, Spain and Italy? Absolutely. But those things will happen… or not.
I laughed my ass off in a lot of meetings and calls. We acknowledged that some things were just funnier than they would have been BC because this is our normal now and you have to take the sunshine wherever it happens.
If there is a take-away from this last year, I have to say that it would be not to get too far ahead of myself. I didn’t wonder when it would be “over.” Generations before us made it through all kinds of calamity and I have faith that we won’t be an exception. I took each day as it came and went. I remain amused by the habits I created every day calling it just another Groundhog’s Day. When the challenges happened, I took a deep breath, cried if I needed to, and pulled myself together. Knowing that none of us are alone in how we’re feeling did bring comfort.
We’re going to be ok.
