So I’m employed (finally!) and working from home, which is so great. My workstation consists of two state of the art monitors, a docking station, laptop, a separate phone and a tablet. My apartment is a nice size, but my desk is a City-sized rectangle fit for the corner of my living room and not an L-shaped wraparound like you’d find in a typical office location.
So I have my trusty iMac, separate keyboard and mouse which I still use pushed to the side to make ample room for my new work gear. Now my desk houses 3 full-sized monitors that are just a bit wider than the actual length of the desk itself. (It looks not a thing like the clean, beautiful desk above.) And when I sit at The Conn as I call it, it seriously looks like I am at the helm of the Starship Enterprise, able to launch a full-on attack of the Klingons from all of the screens and keyboards. (I’m not a Trekkie, but I might be able to beam you up with this setup.)
Thank goodness Michael is as OCD as me and we both share the aesthetically pleasing/perfectionist gene. He actually asked if he could unhook all of the wires (that I haphazardly hooked up just to be operational) and make them look nice. Well hell, yes– have at it! (I love this man.) So he disconnected everything and hung the offensively curled wires over the shower curtain rod in Shorty’s bathroom and used a hairdryer to straighten them one by one. (Who even knew you could do this??) It was like a slow motion at home Corporate Keratin treatment. Once the wires were all obediently linear, he reconnected them, bundled the groups together and used Velcro cable ties to neatly wrap the wires behind the legs of the desk, rendering them practically invisible. The man is a genius, and my workstation looks fabulous.
I have to say that starting a job during a pandemic is definitely a little odd. I missed out on the tour of the office and the polite greetings and handshakes from the hundreds of folks with whom I now work. I did however receive a flurry of welcome emails from colleagues all over the country and Canada, which was so nice. I had no problem finding the bathroom day one since it is my house. There’s no line to use the microwave at lunch, but I favor the oven anyway, and nobody leaves disgusting dirty dishes in the sink here. (I always hated that!) So basically it’s quiet, clean, and I can take lunch anytime I want. The dress code is super relaxed– even on Teams calls almost nobody uses their camera. (I love these peeps already!) I haven’t started “working” exactly yet, since I’m still getting settled, learning the internal systems of which there are many, and I’m busy entrenched in the mandatory and intense 30-day training that I have to weave into my daily schedule– but so far so great!
Blogging now feels like a guilty pleasure. If I’m up before 7am I can usually squeeze in an hour of writing before I have to shower and get my to do list going for the workday. But a typical post can take anywhere from 5-15 hours to write (I know!) and edit, so I’m not making extraordinary progress on adding to my library of stories these days. After quitting time, the last thing I want to do is face another screen and keyboard– but sometimes a quick, few sentences can clear out the creative cobwebs or allow me to start an idea that I had been thinking about during the hectic workday. I’m sure I’ll find my groove and be able to jot a few notes down during lunch or in between meetings and calls so that the morning writing sessions are more productive.
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