Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Perhaps the first thread that ever ended after almost 30,000 posts well? I hope.

 

I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that it’s been three years. It’s like time has been placed in a blender. I’m wondering if this disorientation will eventually wear off. It hasn’t yet.

 

The acceptance of hybrid work might have been the few good things to come out of the whole thing. My company still lets us take two remote days a week, and I take full advantage of those. I haven't been to the office (other than to swap out the company vehicle) in a week since I worked two days on site at an event earlier this week and have taken my two remote days. Will go in tomorrow, and I actually have some people to do some real collab work with so I'm good with that. No way I could ever go back to a full five-day-a-week at the office job now.

 

I think a lot of mayors want that for everyone because they miss the sales tax revenues from the great weekday migration downtown.

 

I enjoy the 2-3 hours I gain without the commute. I do miss the routine of the trip and its forcing me into doing a lot of walking. One day a week, sometimes two, is about enough for me now. I've found a co-working space for another day each week. It mixes things up.

I took a second part-time gig recently that I never could've pulled off if I was in the office every day.

 

My job is entirely remote. I absolutely love it.

 

I’ve worked fully remote for nearly 3 years now. It has gotten old. The weeks fly by, mostly because weekdays are totally repetitive.

 

When the pandemic hit, I was just happy to be working. In the first couple of months it was such a feeling of dread and uncertainty. Working was a great thing to focus on, especially in the news biz. Working from home was such a foreign concept. No newsroom? Impossible. So we thought.

I was eager to get back to the newsroom for a long time. Then I got really comfortable with how we could still collaborate with the technology we had. It got comfortable.

Then it got preferable.

Thought I would stay remote. Things changed and I needed to be in the newsroom a few times a week. Policy is murky and unevenly applied at best. Frustrating.

My commute got longer since I last did it. Still hybrid, so I’m grateful for that.

I’m pretty torn. I see the value of being together. Both related to work and to have a sense of community, outside of family, that has really evaporated in the last few years.

But I really dislike the amount of time and money it takes. Traveling to do basically the same thing I can do from my living room at no cost. There is no doubt my non-work life was much better with completely remote work.

At one point in my career-oriented youth, it was career-advancement at all costs.

So different now. I love my work. But my time away from it has far more value.

The world of work changed forever in March 2020. But the infrastructure of what came before isn’t going to change easily.

 

That’s a great post, DeskGrunt.

And you’re right — the need to physically be all in one place is now a luxury, and we know what happens to any luxury in newsrooms these days.

That genie is never going back in the bottle.

 

They are still throwing up a couple big office buildings in this town, and I shake my head. They say they’ll probably turn into biotech lab space. There’s some demand for that. Not 40 floors of demand, especially if there’s a 40-floor building across the street. Hate to go all Ragu here, but I feel like you can see/could have seen this coming.

 

In the old days, there was something to be said for newsroom camaraderie and the buzz from just being in a humming office putting out a product.

But once the newsrooms were stripped to the bone, and you were sitting in a cubicle for hours with no one else within 50 feet of you . . . well, might as well do it at home.