The New Normal

I love working from home, it makes me so productive that I can defer the meetings and complete my pending tasks, achieve my inbox zero or at least clear the emails to move in that direction and plan the day/week much better to achieve my goals. It gives me time to think! The best part being, I usually have a better day as I can avoid the travel of 1-1.5 hours-mostly depends on the traffic and new road plans by BBMP. Ahh, yes, I stay in Bangalore and I am one of the victims to one of the world’s worst road traffic. But I am still proud to be a Bangalorean by heart. This city has so much to give, so much to learn from. Maybe we can talk about it at a later post.

Coming back to working from home and my love to do that. I also can give more time to Mac (my four legged German Son), honestly he doesn’t like staying at home all by himself all the time. While I work, he sits either on my lap or close to me and that’s his happiness level. He is a sober kid who doesn’t demand anything except for some pat and some appeasement gestures like striking your hand on his mane something like the movement of the oar on a rowing boat again and again. Hah! So much fun.

Now, this was the “normal wfh” at least 2 months ago!

Never realized there could be an abnormal one too! But things drastically changed over the last 2 months. And there is not one office that I know of who is not working from home. In fact, when the lockdown didn’t start, I heard some of my friends say – hey you guys are lucky that you work in Technology companies and can have the “pleasure” of working from home. These were friends in other domains like manufacturing, textiles, factories and some always kept it a little locked. I never knew where they worked except for the fact that they worked in some “import-export” companies. I always mocked saying this is something I have heard only in Bollywood movies. (Bollywood movies are the spiciest movies of the world, just like our taste in spices. If you haven’t watched already watch some YashRaj movies. 😉 )

Anyways, so, now that our government has made some bold steps on a country wide lockdown, obviously all my friends are now working from home.

I asked them in the last couple of days how are they experiencing their first working from home status and now that they are privileged too. To my surprise, that question backfired me. They are not liking work-from-home. Ahh.. Not Liking is probably undermined. It would be hating.. yeah they are hating the “pleasure” of work-from-home.

I also checked with some of my other friends who already had the privilege of working from home earlier. They are struggling with it too.

Why?

I tried thinking about my struggles with this new Work-from-home too. I think this is why I feel this is abnormal. Change is the only constant Normal.

This is a Big Change. A change from everyone’s normal routine. A change from that same old travel, stuck in the traffic, change from seeing the faces directly at office, a change from not hearing/ saying a hello when I enter the office starting with our security to everyone in the team till I enter my Bay, my seat. A change from not having the meetings and lunches at office.

A new change at home where I can’t step out of my doorstep at all, all day long. A change of cleaning the home, doing the dishes, cooking the meals all of it all by ourselves.

A change to continue being positive against all the negatives around!

We usually detest change and this is a Big Change. Its new for all of us. This is normal for all of us to not like this forced wfh.
We need to make peace with it and accept it. This is the routine we need to live. I am sure there will be new learnings, new opportunities and a new Normal we all will get used to!