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

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!

I am very happy for you, NV! <3

was phoning it in a bit for the first few months of WFH but back to normal productivity now

i miss getting lunch at the office more than i do working at the office

Heh yep the coffee break stroll with me mate is badly missed, i am still going in on a friday for an hour at lunch to perform a socially distant version

This would have been a much more productive week had my internet not been down since Tuesday. This shit is fuuuuucked.

i've been smoking more than i was before the first lockdown anyway but again the meeting people in the smoking shelter vibe is a great part of being at work

i am definitely smoking fewer cigarettes, but that's a combination of not taking smoke breaks with colleagues and getting hit up for cigarettes by members of the general public

there was a point before the pandemic when we were having financial problems, and me and my fave work colleague thought of the fundraising strategy of basically standing outside smoking all day and selling cigarettes at 100% markup to passersby as there is heavy foot traffic where we work.

i think we had even come up with the idea of periodic trips across the Nevada border and buying a bunch of cartons at a time to take advantage of the way lower taxes on cigarettes there, so our profit margins could be even higher.

i have had bad thoughts about the social power of smoking that i'm too sober to iterate yet but also

the smoking shelter at work is definitely the place to tap into a lot of truth and gossip about what's going on

today i was fake smoking my pen a lot and thinking about taking up having a pipe but it's no good if you can't smoke one at your desk

I MEAN A TOBACCO PIPE

i remember when i was about to get fired from a job, and part of how I sensed it was coming was that my boss didn't want to take regular smoke breaks w/me the way we used to when I was in her good graces.

yeah smoke shelter is too intimate :/

too intimate for a Judas kiss i mean

in this case, i quit before they could fire me ... and it was a very very very good decision. i still care about the org, and my former boss, but i am much better off not working there.

too intimate for a Judas kiss i mean

― The Scampo Fell to Earth (Noodle Vague), Friday, February 19, 2021 12:19 PM (forty-two seconds ago)

oh indeed!

Sometimes I miss being a smoker but then I remember that it made me feel like utter shit and that I couldn't deal with the constant shortness of breath and the residual cough that would linger forever. I still light one up with a drink on occasion but the next day I immediately recall why it's a habit that I simply cannot sustain – even beyond the abstract and hence ineffective long-term threat of premature death. As a crutch to socialize with fellow self-destructees, it's totally classic tho.

smoking has all those ups and downs and yeah, i smoke skinny roll-ups and not many most days and don't get the worst of it mostly but i'm still on them for the love of the camaraderie as much as the addiction

Skinny roll-ups with a filter is about all I can stand these days, when the temptation arises. I've come to prefer the taste anyway tbh.

oh i don't like straights at all now, but even tho i can tell myself every cig has minimal impact, well, when you're sober you can't kid yourself right?

oh i don't like straights at all now

also "out of context" thread i'm good with this YR WELCOME

Doesn't count if that bit was posted for that very purpose imo.

it were an accident i swear

I was working from home for a couple of years pre pandemic so it wasn’t so much a change of routine. Same blend of productivity and procrastination. The differences have been moving from contract to permanent, which has changed things little and how I interact with other people, which has changed a lot.

The whole company went to home working last year and that has forced people to communicate better. I was previously the only person in my city so I’d miss out on a lot of what was going on in the Sydney and Brisbane offices. Now going on happens on slack. even though we still have offices people aren’t really using them as a place to go and work on a daily basis, they are using them as a place to do specific collaborations with others. We also hired a lot over the last year and neither of our offices are big enough to hold everyone on those cities simultaneously. We’re trying to work out what to do but it almost certainly be a place where everyone has their own desk. Most people are happy to keep working from home most of the week.

The exception has been some of the younger staff who have smaller apartments, roomates etc. They have also suffered the most from the lack of casual interaction, hearing the general buzz of what going on and the opportunities for learning that goes on in an office. I’ve been making sure that I spend more time with them on zoom, bring them into more meetings, drawing attention to stuff on slack etc.

As for me the bit that’s been getting me down is I haven’t seen any of my colleagues in person for a year. Typically we’d meet once a quarter as a team to plan out the next quarter and then individuals more adhoc so I’d probably see someone on average once a month. I really miss this and we’re the poorer for it.

We still have snap lockdowns, sporadic border closures and quarantine orders so travelling interstate is a bit of a minefield. I also have no real desire to visit an airport right now, but as quarantine workers get vaccinated, the outbreaks will hopefully diminish.

I've not done an honest day's work since 2011 but have started smoking again recently. I just have one cigarette every evening but I can feel the creeping nicotine addiction coming back again, it will only be a matter of time when I'm back to 10-20 a day if I don't nip in it in the bud while it is not too difficult. A friend has suggested I should take up vaping but it seems quite ridiculous.

My wife switched to vaping a few years ago and she's never looked back. It hasn't helped her quit, at least not yet, but it's the next best thing.

I'm almost tempted to try it, lol you can never have enough portable electronic devices to mess about with!

i've been working in an office around others for the entire duration of this pandemic and i've been numb to any anxiety or emotions in general for months now, feeling great

We never closed so I’ve been working onsite virtually the entire time & it’s stayed super busy (ito workload I mean, number of ppl around has gone up & down)

I’m used to it at this point, I’m sure workplace safety could be better but I don’t feel horribly unsafe (it was another story in the summer when we had a load of temps milling about). My immediate team has 3 other people in it, we are spread across several large labs tho and we wear masks when we have to work closely (a policy that was adopted very gradually lol). In the break room there might be 10 ppl unmasked (because eating) but spaced out. I get the bus in the morning & there are 2 other ppl onboard, and I walk the 4 miles back which takes me a little over an hour

Mentally idk, absolutely worn down like most ppl - it’s not the job really, which honestly just feels normal, but the fact that there’s nothing else *except* work (and being alone in my flat and sometimes going to the supermarket). I think this exacerbates what’s shit about work in general, being overworked and underpaid and how much of your life it takes up. I get in from work and am just shattered, eat dinner do a bit of reading and crash and then suddenly the alarm is going off again. I’m used to this being the case from harvest time to around March but at least in a normal year I occasionally go to the pub as well lol

So... other? I guess my productivity is about the same tbf

I'm at "working at home - I just am too worn down to care right now and am phoning it in" but that's mainly because I am really sick of my own job, if I liked it more I would be more engaged regardless of whether I'm in the office or not. I've spent most of the past two months applying for new jobs and interviewing, which has been tiresome and draining as well (seven hours of zoom interviews at this last place and they passed on me, almost completely killing my self confidence and esteem; but I have another interview somewhere else tomorrow). Financially the pandemic has been insanely good to us so I'm not complaining about that; spending less money, unemployment funds for my wife have allowed us to have a savings for the first time in a while.

The only thing I like about working from home is it makes it easier to hold down even a part-time job with chronic migraines. On days when I couldn't possibly go in to actual work I can still roll out of bed and power through the length of a class.

This is more or less where I'm at, except I haven't yet started applying to new jobs, for reasons

xp

that level of interview is just insane to me akm, sympathies on that for an ordeal

Yeah, that sounds brutal akm, I'm sorry. Good luck with your interview.

I've got to start applying for jobs very soon as well, because the subject I'm teaching is being phased out at the school I'm at. It was insanely hard last year because they canceled the job fairs, but now at least I have a toehold in the district I want to be in, so I'm hoping it will be slightly easier.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.