Working from home?

It's so much tougher than expected.

I would have said that in spite of certain eccentricities, my household is a pretty happy one. Yet, there are so many days where one of us (usually me) is griping at the other. There's no rhyme or reason to it, and has much to do with what our respective employers want from us.

Mine is expecting me to get on with things at home in preparation for September. All fine with me, it's my preference in terms of what I do to earn my money. I won't go into the fact I'm being asked to do things for my new role that starts in September already. That is a little annoying, but I've dealt with worse in the past.

The husband, on the other hand, seems to not need to do much at all. The occasional checking of emails, the odd response here and there and his work is done. Ever since I've known him, he's made it look like he gets away with doing next to nothing. Almost seven years later I'm still trying to work out how he does it.

My worry coming into this crisis was my great awareness that I need to be in particular surroundings to be productive. Being at home isn't one of those surroundings. It took me a long time to separate work from home and now that I've reached a point where I have pretty much 100% achieved that, I don't want to lose it. Pre-lockdown, when I needed to work on my days off, I'd head to the local coffee shop, and work while enjoying a freshly made latte and perhaps a blueberry muffin. Although my husband will gladly supply me with endless beverages of my choice and will easily occupy himself with his inane love of anything football or video game related, I find myself unable to simply sit in front of the computer and do work. I even turned off the automatic Wi-Fi connection, so that I had to type in the ridiculous password to reconnect and check emails when needed. It's not that I sit and waste time looking on social media, news websites and online shopping portals. I simply can't focus enough to get what is in my head in terms of initial plans into a more concrete, developed form. I feel like it's impossible.

That's where the guilt starts setting in. I have no reason not to get work done during lockdown. I have no children to home school; I have nobody living at home that requires me to care for them for a significant period of the day; I have purposely not bought ingredients for baking or materials for crafting to avoid that temptation. Yet the work is still poor in terms of quantity. I genuinely believe it's because I can't merge home and work anymore. I worked for so many years without separating the two that it almost destroyed my mental health and on occasion probably came close to destroying my relationship too. While I'm grateful beyond belief that I prioritised and compartmentalised where and when I allowed myself to work and relax, my anxiety levels surrounding the consequence of being forced to merge the two again have skyrocketed.

A few of my colleagues have said they are not working as much as they think they should, but they also have children to take care of and need to manage and balance their time much more precisely than I need to. But the fact that they aren't working as much does make me feel a little better. I suppose this situation is unique and with any luck it will be the only time in my life where this happens. I just need to get over the guilt and anxiety somehow.

I've thought of creating a timetable. I've thought of setting my alarm as though I am still going out to work. I've thought of just doing an hour or so here and there when the weather is a bit dull or the husband is watching something I hate on TV. But so far, in those instances, I've reached for a book or a crossword to pass the time instead. Maybe I just don't have my priorities set straight for this period of lockdown and working from home. Or perhaps I need to employ these diversion tactics for the sake of my health. I have no idea how I will overcome the conflict between head and heart here without getting myself into a stressed frenzy where everything somehow gets done for the deadlines set but it will all be one mad rush in the days beforehand, rather than a more relaxed, progressive approach that allows time for review and adaptation.

I want to be the relaxed yet productive worker from home. I just can't master either relaxed or productive to feel like I'm on my way there.

Be kind. Stay safe.