My office at home is pretty well equipped. I have a computer and a printer and whiteboards that I installed with the ambitious idea that I would use them to map projects. There are shelves with different editions of my books, some of which I cannot read because I do not speak Hebrew, Farsi or Turkish or Polish. There are shelves with reference books and galleys and other books related to different projects. I have a home studio for recording “Hear to Slay”, the podcast I present with Tressie McMillan Cottom.
Most days are spent with people in small blocks on my computer monitor, because now that everyone is home, people have found all sorts of excuses to hold meetings. I have ring lights for events and television shows because there are not many studios going to them anymore. Also vanity. Occasionally, a hard case of audiovisual equipment is sent to my home with a laminated instruction card that provides the necessary directions for using the equipment. Occasionally a camera crew comes to the house with their protective equipment. They stand six feet away and I peek into a video monitor and talk to a producer somewhere else.
Almost every day I marvel at how the world has adapted to the pandemic. I thought I was done with public events, but at some point in the summer of 2020, events moved online and now I’m doing multiple events a week again, sometimes in places that would not otherwise take me to their school. or village. I enjoy live events, but they are virtually not the same. When I walk out on stage and see a thousand people cheering, the energy is absolutely electric and unexpected. It’s surreal because I’m just a writer. This is magical because I know we will have an experience that cannot be repeated.
And I miss the signature line, where I could spend a few minutes with readers hearing about their lives, as my work might have a little matter. Now I make myself present from the waist down and sit my basketball shorts at my desk, and when the opportunity is over, that’s it.
Most of my friends with more traditional work also work from home. They created office spaces in their homes. They hang out with their pets, their children and their spouses. They are doing their job just as well as before. And it seems that a surprising number of these friends do not want to return to the office. For those who do not have school-age children, there is time to run a home-based business while doing work. They can bake messages and garden between work tasks. There is no dressing in work tow. Bras and pants with buttons and ties and high heels and a full face of makeup were left. There is no more commuting – all the time in a car, while you are pressing the steering wheel, it contracts. There is no longer an attempt to finish work while being interrupted every 10 minutes or endlessly listening to an employee.
But many were also lost. With all the flaws in the workplace, there is a certain camaraderie associated with life in an office. A good meeting can give energy in a way that is difficult to repeat with Zoom. We can not go to our favorite co-worker’s office to drink coffee and gossip if we need a break. It’s all Slack chats and emails and phone calls, and whatever happens at home after work, without any distance. The balance between work and privacy has deteriorated for better or worse. In many of the co-worker letters I receive, I can see how the explosion has changed how people feel about their work.
There is a lot of unfulfillment – people who are bored in their work or who just hate what they do, or they hate the people they work with but can not see a way out. Many women deal with condescending bosses, pay gaps and a lack of housing for motherhood. Many men try to figure out how to navigate the workplace as cultural norms change. People from all walks of life want to know how to make their companies more inclusive and how to address institutional racism, or they are outraged at these efforts because they are wrongly involved.