Being back

My work-life balance has been atrocious since I’ve started working again.

Since being brought back from furlough, it’s been hard to draw lines between what is my workspace and what is my at-home space. I think it’s a dilemma that everyone living in a shoebox-sized flat has battled with.

I miss the office noises. I remember finding office noise apps and sites that just played ambient office-related white noise. It was okay to hear but annoying as I guess my brain knew it was mechanically manufactured.

It was also very odd because I was an office manager without an office to manage!

When lockdown finally eased, there was the occasional opportunity to travel to the office. I could meet with suppliers and service providers, do a bit of post scanning (this was part of my day to day when I worked for an accounting firm, so to not do it regularly was very odd), prepare the office for the eventual return to office-working. Of course, between Boris Johnson saying, “Work in the office if you can” and his declaration (because there was a spike in coronavirus cases) to “Work from home if you can”, our office spent a considerable amount getting the office up to social distancing guidelines scratch. Of course, management did not require us to work from the office. We were allowed to choose the work situation that worked best for each of us, individually. The office was there “as a resource”.

I’m finding working from home very intense. I think it’s because you’re more focused on each task and sometimes it’s hard to stop when you’re on a roll. I’m also finding that because I’m working from home, I tend to start when I wake up (which is early…about 5am most days) and finish when it’s time for supper (usually when the BBC evening news starts, so about 6pm). If you consider that time frame and factor in any breaks I take, that’s at least a solid 10 hours of working.

I enjoy travelling into work because it provides variety and gives me something else to do. However, in these trying times where there is a deadly virus about, and no vaccine is available, it’s hard not to be obsessed with infection control. Because let’s face it, not everyone thinks about germ transmission. People here have to be reminded to sneeze into tissues, for goodness’ sake! My rants about people and infection control can be a whole other blog entry! London is also not quite the same right now. It’s very quiet and the buzz and hum of the city seem to have disappeared. And even though stricter lockdowns haven’t been put into place, everything is eerily quiet and empty.