Telecommuting review

I have completed four weeks at home now, so this is a reasonable time to review.

As suspected, I do work effectively at home. I have had opportunities to work from home before, and I did okay. Instead of getting caught up in coworker conversations, I pet dogs, but that actually takes less time.

From an exercise point of view, it is sort of mixed. We have been great about working out, and have been doing the aerobic workouts six days a week as intended. For step counts, it is pretty bad. Generally I need to take about an hour to just walk to get over 10000. This makes sense. Getting to work was about 25 minutes, getting from work was about another 20, and then there are the little things. For example, the bathroom is much closer when working from home.

Getting that hour of walking in is tricky. What I really need to do is start getting up earlier and walking before I start working. Right now, most of my extra time is spent sleeping. I don’t feel awful about that, but I do want to start getting some other things in there two. I did average 10000 steps the first week of the Summer Games, but that would not have been possible without dancing Friday night and walking around downtown Saturday. I’m working on it.

Also, I have not really been consistent with cooking healthier (or at all). Even though it seems like being here and not having the travel time would mean that I do not need to do as much advance planning, that is not the case. Some of it is also the weather, because when it is hot and humid you don’t really want to cook anything, and if I don’t have a solid plan my sisters say they will just eat cereal, which takes away my desire to even try. We’re not eating worse—I just still have not achieved full potential.

Coworkers can be very annoying remotely, as well as in person, but it is probably way easier to mask the annoyance. They can also be supportive via chat, so really, they are pretty much the same. I know there are ones I talk to less, but I can work on that. I was worried that being remote would make training harder, but that went well.

I have not turned into a hermit. During this month I have delivered dinner to three families, volunteered at the Food Bank, gone dancing, gone out to hear a band play, and had phone conversations with friends. I just got back from Buffalo Wild Wings with friends.

I also signed up for an extra shift at Blues Fest. So in addition to working Green Team Saturday, I also have a shift in the merch tent. This came from thinking about how I would like to help with a music festival. I realized something similar I could do would be to help with roller derby. Lisa said I could do merch for them, then I signed up for the Blues Fest shift to get some practice. Then she realized she had lied—only derby girls can do merch. I can act as a bouncer for them though, so I am looking forward to that.

It does make things nicer for the dogs. They have a lot more company, and if Mom has to run out she worries less. Mainly they’re sleeping, but they like having more people around, even when asleep.

I do still need to do some organization of the area. I have cleared out some things, and there is more to do, and I will probably decide I need a new chair, but things are working out okay overall.

The one big downside is that when I was getting up at 4:45, I had the bathroom all to myself. Now it is occupied, and I don’t like that, though I don’t think I dislike it enough to be getting up at 5 again. This leads to the obvious question: do I bother getting dressed? Well, I have to. I need to walk the dogs every morning, or they bug me, and I am not going out there undressed.

Now, if sometimes I am late getting out of the shower, and need to get online right away, and work for a while before having time to put on clothes, or if sometimes it is hot and stuffy and some things don’t stay on, well, until videoconferencing becomes standard that’s just nobody’s business but my own.