The New Normal

One of the things that is getting me through the global pandemic is my constant awe of the ways people are adapting to it all. While it may have been the case a few weeks ago that everyone was re-watching High School Musical and touting "we're all in this together", even the most health conscious of us have had our own personal moments straight out of Lord of the Flies as we head into Memorial Day weekend.

Having been a social-distancer myself, I also made the decision rather early on to spend the main part of the pandemic quarantining with my family. I'm not usually one to suffer from anxiety, and have honestly never really had issues with being alone, but I realized pretty quickly that this situation is entirely different. There's a difference between being okay (and happy!) living alone and living alone and not talking to anyone (in person) but a grocery store checkout clerk or a takeout delivery person for weeks at a time (team meetings over video-chat during work hours does not take the place of face-to-face interaction for long periods of time, at least not for me). In the end, this has even shifted my stance on remote working - it's never been something I clamored for pre-COVID, but there are certain joys to working out of my apartment, or in the case currently, being able to literally pack up my office and take it with me with no worries regarding productivity. The only let-down so far? Not having an actual office to help with the blurry line of work/life separation remote working sometimes brings - something that I hope going into 2021 will change for the better ;)

Work in the time of the Coronavirus...

As I'm now one of the many people internationally working from home due to the threat of COVID-19, it's giving me an eye-opening perspective on the state of the digital workspace. While there are many articles and opinions out there written by people either much more intelligent or much more well-informed than me (and in some cases probably both), as someone who usually dislikes working from home, I figured it was the perfect time to throw my own hat into the ring.

Now I know there are conspiracy theorists out there who take our currently social distancing situation as the first step on the way to the humanity presented in the Disney movie Wall-E - that of a dystopian future where the human race is more concerned with the face on the screen rather than the face right next to them. While personally I'm not quite to that level of panic yet (albeit I'm only two days in to my social distancing), the way most of the world was able to shift to a virtual workplace was something that would not have been possible at this scale even fifteen years ago. That bears the question - is all of this just leading to a future populated by jobs at home rather than in a physical workplace? I hope not. As I mentioned earlier, I'm probably in the minority in that I dislike working remotely if I have the choice of going into the office; as much as I'm an introverted extrovert, I really do like having a separation between my work and home life and truly believe it usually helps my overall productivity and mental health.

Personally, it seems to me that humanity as a whole does not do well with absolute solitude for long periods of time (all you have to do is Google "solitary confinement" and the internet will provide). Seeing coworkers face-to-face is something expected and normal in this day and age, but with the onset of technology such as Skype/Teams/Uber, the argument against shifting from a physical workplace to a virtual one isn't completely unheard of, with a lot of people wanting to take advantage of the benefits from not having to go into the office every day. 

But what happens if the situation that forces mass situations of working from home is a due to a global pandemic? Being able to continue working within this situation is great for a majority of people (myself included), but what happens when some of that population become isolated from everyone but the face on the screen or the voice on the phone? That's when the downside of a completely virtual workspace can set in. I currently live by myself in a pretty populated apartment complex in New Jersey. On a normal day, I go to work where I interact with a group of 30-odd people, and then make my way home where I usually interact with another handful of people where I live. I'm now in the situation where I last interacted with an actual person nearly a full two days ago. I'm not completely isolated, mind you - the amount of contact I've had with coworkers, friends and family has been at what I would consider my normal level (and in some cases higher) - but it's all been through a screen or phone. Physical isolation is still isolation, and even for an introverted extrovert such as myself, I can't say I'll be completely comfortable with the situation if it continues like this for weeks at a time. With that being said, social distancing is now the best way of stopping the spread of the virus, and I'm practicing it now as the closest family member that I could stay with would fall under the bracket of being more at risk to the virus than I am, if I'm a carrier.

Like I said earlier, as much as my generation has a love of dystopian futures / may be a bit fatalist at times, I don't think we're quite at the level to start naming our kids Katniss and Peta. But if this tells me anything, although the idea you can work remotely is more of a possibility now for those in a digital industry, it may not be the best for long periods of time. Our overall level of digital saturation is not quite yet at the point where the world of Wall-E is our destiny, but it does make me wonder how much closer COVID-19 has pushed us in that overall direction.