Well we are on full time work from home now until indefinitely. Great for our physical health not great for my mental health. I am allowed to continue using the work gym — a service that I pay for — and will probably up my attendance to 3x a week. I’m going to tweak my schedule in other ways, like doing my runs in the morning, to help proactively avoid some of the issues I tend to run into when full time WFH. Issues like? Why shower, you’re not leaving the house today so why bother. Why get dressed, no one will see you today, why bother. It’s great that many people have the executive functioning and overall mental strength to continue these sorts of self care routines when no one else is there to see them, but historically, I don’t. I’d love to believe I’ve become a healthier person mentally since the last time I fell into those traps but the last time was definitely still within the past 3 years so, proactively changing my schedule to help force some of that will certainly not harm me. Right now, my in person TX interview is still on. I hope it stays that way. I want to be my most charmingest for this, and no one is at their most charmingest when they’re talking on the phone. Yours in resignation and while eating many chicken wings (f you, I went hard on leg day today and squatted the most I’ve ever squatted), Refugee
Update: in person interviews are now cancelled. Legs are still sore and I ran 4 miles. I have a very generous friend who invited me to WFH at her place which is happily enough at the beach, so I’ve taken refuge here today/tomorrow. I’ll finally fulfill a long term goal of a Long Beach run (attempted unsuccessfully twice before). Also, corona has shown up up north but not down here at the beach yet, so this could even be considered a precautionary measure. Because I was honest enough to tell my boss that I have issues with working from home and believe it has a negative impact not only on productivity but also mental health, now I get to have a 2x as long meeting with her tomorrow for our regular catch up. I appreciate the effort, but it’s not the toll of working from home for two days that I’m worried about. It’s the fact that our leadership said they are making this decision at 30 day intervals and have not even established criteria for when they’d consider lifting this moratorium. I can wfh for two weeks. More than a month? That’s my issue. And I’ll be honest — this is a measure we are forcing on all workers we possibly can. That means people who didn’t have laptops have had them specially ordered just so they can be forced to work from home full time without ever having done it before. That’s managers managing remote associates who have never had to do it before. I really don’t believe I’m the only person who’s going to feel mental health impacts of this. I get that we need to think about public health and value it, I just think that long term, there are going to be other costs as a result.