WFH: Day 1, The End

A tragedy, ladies and gentlemen.

Soon after I announce and celebrate my work from home status, it gets taken away from me. See, our department has no work from home option for several reasons. We still don’t. But COVID-19 forced us into it.

Long story short, about 7-10 people in our department were selected to work at a different location to answer calls. A few additional, me included, were selected as back-ups, just in case. It might never happen, they said. But guess what?

…

Exactly. In case happened. And only after one day of working from home. One day. ONE!

I mean, I can’t even. I’m just. I.

Dream come true

In light of recent events, I’m talking about the infamous virus with a name similar to that of an alcoholic beverage of course, most companies have decided and advised their employees to work from home. Mine included.

I have mentioned this from my previous entry, I hate people. I mean not really, I just don’t like socializing that much. It exhausts me. Having that said, yes, I am very much looking forward to the next few weeks (however long this crisis lasts). And yes, I am referring to it as a crisis because we all know it is.

My coworkers joke about how (1) they will miss talking to people, and (2) they’ll be going out of their minds being with their significant other 24/7. I even overheard one say that they might end up killing each other in about two weeks. How dreary. How dark and cynical. I don’t get it… plus, why dampen the joy that working from home brings?

Literally, no unwarranted face-to-face social interactions for a few days! I have never had the opportunity to work from home before. This is uncharted territory for me. Nonetheless, my arms are wide open.

When “Life” Happens

You know when you’re telling a story and you start with, “remember that time…?” It recently dawned on me how bittersweet that is.

Over chocolate banana pudding, my friend and I started stalking people on Instagram. Let’s face it, that is one of the “hobbies” almost everyone has taken up since the rise of social media. Now, in order to chop off some guilt, we tried to be cultured by looking at photos about travel, food, and fashion. In short, pretty much everything that everyone ever uploads. As our selfish nature would have it, the conversation went from “he’s been everywhere, I wonder what he does for a living?” to “I know, I used to bake a lot.”

Soon after, we started talking about things we used to do but couldn’t anymore because, well, “life.” I say life with quotation marks because as an average person, I would say majority of the populace fall into this category, life is not exactly what we envision it to be. Ideally speaking, of course. Our everyday existence is made up of routine brought about by the one thing that drives all of our needs, survival.

Food, hygiene, sleep, work. That sums up “life” for us. At the end of the day, after all that was needed to be done, we barely have time, nor energy to do something that we really want. Sometimes we’re just too afraid to deviate from what we’re used to. There’s comfort in predictability. Hence stories that start with “remember that time…?”