Working from home diary, day one
Posted on
Wednesday, 18th March 2020
It technically started yesterday. Some time around mid-morning, the management team emerged from their lair to tell us we were being sent home. Every day for the last couple of weeks, they've had meetings to discuss the progress of the virus that has crept its way across the planet. Every day, they've assessed risks and made plans to mitigate them for the sake of the business and the people that work there. And every day, we've slunk ever closer to working indefinitely from home.
Home, for me, is now a four-bedroom detached thing on the southern edge of Leamington Spa. It's a beautiful building, and, since moving in six months ago, I've looked forward to returning to it at the end of each busy day at work. Yesterday, however, it all felt somehow different. For one thing, we were to leave at lunchtime, which always feels like the strangest time to be travelling anywhere. There's a wrongness to being in a place you frequent every day at a time you're not usually there. The sun casts different shadows, and the faces that pass are bereft of the smiles and nods bred of familiarity. For another, we were told we'd be 'working from home' for the foreseeable future; a prospect that has never excited me as much as it does others. It's a novelty to some, I suppose: a benefit or perk. To me it smacks of isolation. In this, I knew I'd be going home in the near certainty that the daytime interactions I'd grown so accustomed to were likely to be rare commodities for the foreseeable future.
This shouldn't be a problem for a developer. We're rarely counted among the most dazzling tones on the colour wheel that is the social spectrum. We're often quiet and subdued by nature, preferring the company of a select few, rather than launching ourselves into the crowd and hoping to be caught by as many hands as can reach us. Given the choice between the wildest of parties and a quiet room with a decent internet connection, the only reason you'll find us blurry-eyed the next day is because we've overdosed on screen time. And yet I hate working alone.
During the seven and a half years with my previous employer, the team I was in dwindled from a peak of six soon after I started to a very solitary me. For the last eighteen months, I worked alone in an office built for many more, slowly drowning under a workload intended for much the same. By the end of my time there I was a physical and emotional wreck; a mere shadow of the person I'd been only a couple of years earlier, drained of my confidence, my optimism and my mental health. In the (almost) two years I've been with my current employer, so much of that has been restored. I now work as part of a real team, full of real, live, interesting and inspiring people that make going to work as close to a joy as such a thing can be. On a daily basis, I'm surrounded by people from all manner of different countries and backgrounds, each bringing with them a wealth of personal and professional experience that, for the first time in many years, makes me feel like I belong. And, to top it all, I actually love my job.
But then there's the coronavirus.
We'd heard mention of it in the news for months. It seemed to spiral out of Wuhan before anybody had chance to get a handle on it. I'm as guilty as anyone of seeing the headlines with that strange and selfish sense of detachment that, however awful it is, it's not happening here. But then it was. It was slow at first. The first case arrived in Britain and seemed to fill every front page. By then, it was conquering great swathes of Europe and pushing further afield, but somehow it still wasn’t here. Day by day, the numbers crept up, first in handfuls, then dozens, and hundreds. Soon our government lost the will to count them, but still the figures climbed.
Now, everything has changed. I still find it difficult to process. I have all of the facts I'm capable of understanding, and have watched its progress with the same fascination as anyone else, but the surreal nature of what's happening still leaves me numb. To be told to stay home, to keep away from others, to not go anywhere—even to work—is something I'm more used to in science fiction than actual fact. If not for my partner, I might not see another soul for the duration. The streets are bare. That last train home was all but empty, and the further I travelled, the less I saw. Any hopes of a last flurry of excitement before I hid myself away were dashed a little more with every step.
It's a type of flu. Its symptoms are usually coughing and fever. Most people report feeling only mild effects; more of an irritation than anything. To those of a healthy disposition, and especially those middle-aged or younger, the risks are minimal. I'm not afraid of getting it for myself. I'm young enough and fit enough to be out of the major risk categories. I may not be training for the half marathon I did this time last year, but my current fitness fad of hitting twenty-thousand steps a day should see me through. But there are risks. It's those around me I worry about. Infected or otherwise, I don't want to be a carrier that puts others at risk. People are dying. The risks are real, and the measures taken to mitigate them are valid. I just can't quite rationalise the reality of them, and how quickly they took effect.
And so, here I am. Resigned to my situation, I've set up camp at home. I have a work laptop, a packet of biscuits and two cats that are amused by the novelty. As much as I love them, I hope they don't have to get used to it.