Dreams have no limits. But mine seemed to be very realistic. Since childhood, my not-so-fancy head dreamed about the same thing every day. Getting ready, stepping down to my car, driving to my office, sipping my green tea, and getting to my desk for work is all I wished. And this dream turned into a reality in the year 2019 following the purchase of my new car.
And? Knock knock says the COVID Tsunami. The initial vacation that âMr. lockdown gave me was greeted with warm hugs. But soon after, the COVID floods looked unstoppable, & companies decided to build dams, called âwork from homeâ. Now, this alien concept, not just placed my car & associated dreams in the garage for months but forced me to adapt to this situation. I felt like some wicked uncle was snatching away my Hershey cookie for his sadistic pleasure. Now I had 20 reasons at least to skip work. But here is how I convinced myself to âadapt to this not-so-welcoming changeâ.
- The TIME tantrum.
âRotiâsâ are a part of my staple diet and âI am busyâ & âSorry! I am lateâ are my staple phrases. Work from home meant trimming travel & traffic. It also meant more time to engage in productive things like gym, yoga, baking, or a conversation with an old friend. This implied less irritation & less anxiety throughout the day. Bonus it is!
Bonuses need not be measured with rupees or dollars, they can be in the form of an anxiety-free peaceful start to work each day.
Besides, some of us are saving money on our therapy visits catering to back pain from long drives to work. I diagnosed myself with this dreadful disease called TTT meaning, âThe Time Tantrumâ. Operating from home was my blessing in disguise as I saw the increasing tendency to erase my staple phrases from memory.
- The ambivalence of AMBIANCE
For a brief period of my life, I felt the need for my personal office/desk to operate. In the last few months, I asked myself, âWhy?â And I kept getting the same answer, âI need the right ambiance to engage in work.â
In 1975, 20-year-old Jobs and Wozniak set up a shop in Jobs’ parentâs garage working on the prototype for Apple Inc. Yes, the same Steve Jobs, who invented the idea of the MacBook Air, on which my fingers are now loitering all day. So besides Mr.Jobs making all our jobs convenient from home, he set an example that it could be started from a garage as well.
I soon realised I was fooled by the thought, that ambiance is a prerequisite to good food. But in reality, good food tastes better even at home. It all depends on how hungry one is!
- Schoolmaster vs SELF-MASTERY
Throwback to school days, when I made a beautiful letter in my art class, saying,
“Dear Teacher, I talk to everyone, so moving my seat wonât help!“
At the beginning of this adventure, I felt so unsupervised at home, & missed my boss who kept me on toes all the time. Soon, I felt the need to address the idea of self- control to survive the competitive world. And so, I battled through impulses that pulled me towards Netflix, naps, and of course, long walks to the fridge. Honestly, I am not a victorious warrior in this domain, just a survivor, but it works!
Apart from exercising my alliteration skills in this article, I concluded, that while I tried to fit in the âwork-from-homeâ pattern, I ended up erasing all the excuses I made to myself, and the process seemed clearer. Irrespective of the type of change, whether it is the kind of work, moving to a new place, working in different time zone, having to bear with a pay cut, or even losing your job and starting it all over again, adaptations get easier when we turn away our minds from the reasons it gives us to escape from the change. So I learned the art of fooling myself in a way that drove me in the forward direction. And for some of us, it opens new doors as well.
Despite this change in perception, I still struggle on some days. So lately, I have started keeping my WiFi router in prayers for its stability and strength. May Lord shower his blessings to all our external & internal routers in these tough times.
– Dr. Unnati Jain