work during the pandemic - where are you at, mentally?

super worn down, but not because of working from home or the pandemic, well not entirely ... just the fact that so many people are not working and have been unemployed for almost a year ... and I haven't had more than 4 days off in a row in ... 6 years.

mentally I am in a fucking pit tbh

I fucking hate my job and I hate everyone I work with

<3 Colonel Poo. know the feeling.

another thing that wore me down is from March of last year until.....January of this year, we were a level of busy we had never been in this role because people kept getting hired and quitting so we had to run like three classes to retain the people we'd normally get from two.

so when things slowed do, naturally.....the last thing my brain wants to do is accelerate back to that again.

I occasionally feel guilt of not being productive enough, then I remember the way the company milked me to death between 2014-2017 and caused me to lose my sanity to where I had to go see a therapist to help get rid of the panic attacks that had resurfaced regularly during that timeframe.

actually ... that's really insightful! Like, maybe that's part of why I feel like garbage? At the beginning of the pandemic (and for months on) I was in crisis-response mode having to learn a bunch of stuff and help clients navigate these new things, and then things slowed down a bit for the holidays, and now ... I don't want to accelerate back to that again, as you said?

More productive than ever, for two main reasons

i. I work better in a twice a day burst pattern of 11am-3ish and 6ish-7:30ish, which i can now do

ii. As you may be able to tell from the above hectic schedule, "as productive as ever" was never actually a breakneck pace

I'm as productive as ever, perhaps even more so
but p worn down with it

i was very much a burst pattern guy when I worked in implementation requirements.

there's only so long you can do that work each day without needing a break. but during those bursts, man would I get shit done.

do miss that job as it was closer to what I like doing, but the toxicity in that department is something I can never go back to.

and every time I've tried looking outside my company, they've offered me like....half or less of what i make now so lol

Now lets be clear those are ranges during which i am more able to knuckle down/concentrate, not my daily schedule

This may be a personal thing but solo concentration on text/work for longer than like an hour isn't in my wheelhouse anymore (tho i can spend all day in group/discussion activities and only feel more energised at the end of the day)

yeah it was less 'do no work' for me and 'read occasional news articles/ILX' during those break periods

(famous people are absolutely NOT travelling rn)

this comes as a big surprise to me tbh

not for press etc

and certainly not for non-affiliated (non-network/studio-based) projects

lol they're already talking about resolving work travel at my place and re-opening the office soon. to be honest - the latter I think we'll probably be ok to do in a few months, as long as we have some kind of 'work at home' exemption for those people who don't feel comfortable.

but traveling? some of our work travel for training is to the Philippines, which is a 14 hour flight plus usually a layover at LAX of a few hours. though those business class international planes are very spread out and you could probably be ok with mask, lotta opportunity for exposure on a flight that long.

my boss's boss challenged this idea saying "it's too early to be talking about stuff like this now", but she actually asked people if they were interested in some stateside travel. I used the "i'm taking care of my dad" excuse which should get me out of a lot.

eventually though they might say "you agreed to travel as part of the role", well sure, my dad wasn't disabled at the time!

*resuming

if I get forced to fly anywhere in this current pandemic, the corporate credit card is being used on $50 steak nightly, that's the exchange

Wow so as an addendum to my posts above I just learned I'm a finalist for a tenure-track academic job and the department wants me to come for an on-site visit. This is good news, but a little daunting despite assurances from those in charge of the visit, as the school is in South Dakota.

NB I live in Minnesota so I don't have to fly (I probably wouldn't fly no matter what)

I’m a hermit, I love this shit

Been doing this for a while now but it's started to feel more like living at work than working from home. I work from my quite small bedroom, and being stuck in here all day and night is taking its toll. I find I don't really get properly stuck into work as early as I used to, forget to take breaks, then end up working late a lot. Not sure it's necessarily a change in activity. Probably just picking up slack from my colleagues who were let go last year

was on furlough March-July and again for a few weeks in November, and like oscar bravo says, I didn't miss that 20% of my salary because I wasn't spending any money outside of bills and groceries.

made redundant just over two weeks ago, can't find the motivation to start job-hunting because everything feels so static and bleak, it's hard to imagine an exciting new world full of potential and opportunity when it looks like this now.

Definitely more productive than ever, even though my actual circumstances haven’t changed much (I’ve been working from home since 2017). I wrote a book last year (pub date Jan 2022) and a proposal for a second, which is sitting with two publishers now. I haven’t gained any clients but I haven’t lost any either.

was up until midnight strategizing for some last minute program funding thing; had a 9am zoom meeting -- realized that actually I could get 7 hours of sleep and I think I got 6 3/4 hrs because I was anxious and woke up before the alarm

I've found if I'm setting an alarm, I need to try to begin sleeping at least an hour before the optimal time for sleep to begin. because if I need 7 hours of sleep and go to sleep 7.25 hours prior to the alarm, all I do is get anxious about getting enough sleep and it takes me hours to get to sleep.

sleep aids stopped working on me eons ago.

the pandemic has completely wrecked my sleep. I never had this many issues sleeping previously.

that means I can be real brain foggy some days when training and lose my train of thought mid-sentence.

"everybody turn to page..........false."

i've been working on-site throughout the pandemic. my normal work area is well ventilated, and i'm usually not around many other people, so i'm pretty unlikely to get covid at work. that said, i kind of despise a bunch of people i work with that i didn't previously, which probably isn't healthy. i'll never stop being impressed by how eager they are to find excuses to not have masks on in poorly-ventilated indoor areas. i also feel like there's a bad dynamic where people who are working remotely are less helpful and more likely to create useless chores for people working on-site than they would be if they actually had to show up in person.

I need to try to begin sleeping at least an hour before the optimal time for sleep to begin.

oh for sure, hence the calculation of 7 hours based on "going to bed" at midnight and having to be up at 8:15am to be functional for a 9am meeting.

oh lol I never do the "being up an ample amount of time before work" thing, my naive self expects to wake up at 8:55 and be solid at 9:00 am

I need to have at least two cigarettes prior to being functional w/another human being in a professional context

also coffee

For a while, I was coming home at midnight on Tuesdays and having to get back to work at 7 the next morning for a 16.5 hour shift. I was able to switch the Wednesday morning shift to Friday starting this week, which means that I can get more sleep.

I go to my university office three times a week. I love it. It saved me. I reached a point in late August when, after a 2 p.m. Zoom class when I'd been home for hours, I closed my laptop and realized, "Fucking hell, it's going to be like this forever, isn't it?"

When the university allowed us to return in late September, I realized how much I'd missed morning exercise, showering, picking clothes, and driving to campus....even though I was by myself in my office suite and Zoom-ing in a space smaller than my apartment. I see colleagues, one or two at a time, every four or five weeks. I have the space to myself.

Now I've evolved toward actually teaching a remote course over Zoom while in the classroom -- another psychological balm. Yesterday and last Wednesday's classes were best since Feb-March 2020 before the lockdown. Man, have I missed the psychological comfort of classroom space even when no one but me is in it, acting like a ham.

and, yeah, been quite productive as a writer

I've been working from home since St. Patrick's Day. I'm okay as long as I have enough work to keep me busy. But during lull times, like right now...?

Feels like I’m in the second or third category yet according to my annual review this was my best year ever. Maybe in spite of the distraction I just have more time due to not commuting and no office bullshit. Still, I feel much less connected to my work than I did before. Sometimes it almost feels unreal, as though my job is just a chimera.

Feels like I’m in the second or third category yet according to my annual review this was my best year ever. Maybe in spite of the distraction I just have more time due to not commuting and no office bullshit. Still, I feel much less connected to my work than I did before. Sometimes it almost feels unreal, as though my job is just a chimera.

Feels like I’m in the second or third category yet according to my annual review this was my best year ever. Maybe in spite of the distraction I just have more time due to not commuting and no office bullshit. Still, I feel much less connected to my work than I did before. Sometimes it almost feels unreal, as though my job is just a chimera.

working at home: sometimes doing well, sometimes doing my best, sometimes a mess
but i'm freelance so the lurking spectre is that I'm going to have no work come May. it's a bad time.

earnestly cannot tell if anyone at my company is genuinely doing any work on a given day

Rude to look too hard rly

Started working in an office at the start of the year. Hadn't worked for about 16 months prior between bad mental health and unemployment. The building is very covid-secure and sparsely staffed. I've surprised myself by being mostly giddily high at having a job and a routine and money. Tinge of survivor's guilt maybe, plus I'm still only in the induction phase, but fuck it, on the whole I cannot remember the last time in my life I felt this good and this mentally strong.

Fuck yeah, that's the stuff NV

One for the KIP Covid thread.

Great to hear nv

awesome, NV.

Ive been in and out of the mostly-deserted office in the past three weeks due to work that couldnt be done at home.

Like alfred, ive really enjoyed it, whether that be the change of routine, the movement itself or the environment

Might look to keep it up, i had thought that the guff about a mixed of wfh/office routine was nonsense but im finding otherwise

Thanks everybody

I'll probably be given the opportunity to work from home at some point but I live 20 minutes walk away and the walk and the routine of getting up and leaving the house is also really good for me so I'm happy coming in as long as I can

Yes, one of the things I miss most about not working is the walk there and back, which is the only exercise I had last year.

'Grats NV, that's excellent news!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

what if you were at 4) before the pandemic

what if you were at 4) before the pandemic

I'm taking this as a purely hypothetical question. my take would be there's nowhere to go but 'up' or 'out' and both options have the potential to be a positive outcome.

nb: 4) = "I do zero work and it's a matter of time before I'm discovered"

11) trying to ignore the ledge

I took this week off and my gooood it felt good

"working in office/around other people - I do zero work and somehow nobody has noticed," but my impostor syndrome has been telling me this since I was 14.

i have found myself looking forward to weekends / bank holidays more than i used to, even if i do nothing with them.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

11) trying to ignore the ledge

Rude.

It's been hell year and a half working in the bowels of the information technology industry. Other than a few days here and there, I have been still on-site. It's always weird to see people who have not seen the office come in for the first time, they still have that "just out of the bubble" vision that I lost probably second week of April last year.

In general, my feelings on the past year is that the human race is mostly a bunch of a$$holes and I have wished many days for the sun to go supernova and blot this grease spot of a planet out of the heavens. I would rather spend a year detassaling corn in an endless July than re-live my last work year. At least when I had that gig the people I worked for seemed to have some regard that I was a human being and cared that I did not overheat and die in the fields.