Getting back into the groove of waking up early for work is exhausting! Not that I slept in very late during vacation, but the difference between waking up at 5:30 am and 7:00 am is significant, okay?????
But we still got out the door a bit before 6:00 am, which is the goal. I am WFH this morning, as I have a doctor’s appointment at 10:00 am, but after that I’ll be heading into the office for the first time in 2½ weeks. It feels weird…especially since we are still only doing partial staffing at the office.
This morning as I walked around the pond I found myself anxious and annoyed…I really don’t want to go back to the office. While I like my colleagues and don’t hate my job, I prefer being home. A friend shared this article on twitter, “I’m not Scared to Re-Enter Society. I’m Just not Sure I Want To” and, as they say, BIG ENERGY. I have a circle of friends and my online communities and my writing, and I can do 90% of my day-job at home. I hear of some folk (in better financial situations than I am) who are just up and quitting if they are not “allowed” to keep working from home and I am both happy for them and viciously jealous.
We say a lot that we don’t know what the future holds, although in a lot of ways we do — our routines and how we have built our lives create a lot of repetition and familiarity and expectations that are, 99% of the time, fully met. I wake up in the same bed every morning, in my same home, with my dog, and so on. What we don’t know about are the exceptions, the accidents and the violence and the diseases that creep through our day even if only peripherally. So we do know what the future holds, generally if not specifically. What we choose to do with that information, whether we push back and fight for change or just wake up and expect the same things we always have, is the real question.
I thought about that a lot on my walk, wondering what it even means to “get back to normal” (a term I am beginning to loathe).
