On Being in Quarantine (From a Freelancer's Point of View)
Today a timely post popped up on the Old Girl’s Facebook page of my former high school. In 1944, the students were forced into their own Quarantine for 10 days, as one of the house prefects had developed Scarlet Fever.
“On Being in Quarantine (From a Day Girl’s Point of View)”, written by D.W, was published in the school magazine, which the Archivist has recently rediscovered - an uncanny find given the timing.
I love D.W’s short account of the experience, partly because it’s a lovely reflection of the age and time of the writer, but also because her own experience so closely resembles my own. As the majority of NZ (and the world) has transitioned to working from home for a consistent, extended period of time, no doubt we’ve all experienced a rollercoaster of emotions just as D.W did when forced into ‘quarantine’.
As the prospect of this new life unfolded in front of us, there was probably the initial hint of excitement about working from home - the prospect of so much spare time and freedom. It’s likely that the glimmer was short-lived. Quickly, we remembered the month’s worth of of work looming ahead of us which seemed impossible to do at home - without access to printers, or prototypes, 3D printers or 5 different colours of post-its. We experienced the sudden rush of despair as we realised that we had no desk, or comfortable chair to sit in, and suddenly had visions of our spines collapsing after 4 weeks of sitting on the couch with a laptop on our knees.
All of a sudden we had nostalgia for our workplace - for the shared morning teas, the banter around the coffee machine, and the team meetings where you could actually talk to a real human. But then we got to work for the first day or two at home, and it actually wasn’t as terrible as we had imagined. We got quite a bit done, which was a surprise. We decided that this working from home thing wasn’t so bad. But by the time Friday rolled around, we’d got a bit bored of spending our time within the same 4 walls, and we spent 8 hours doing laps around the house just incase the wine bottle had fallen out of the fridge.
Fortunately, as a freelancer, I’m used to working from home so this rollercoaster isn’t new to me. But that doesn’t mean the lockdown has felt easy every day. Some days my eyes blink open effortlessly before my alarm, and I’m full of vigour and intention for the day. I tick things off my to-do list with haste. I somehow manage to fit in a full-day’s work, a 7+ km run, some photo sorting/editing, and cooked dinner. I’ve baked some scones, practised my German, done three loads of washing and ironed the pillowcases.
Other days, it’s a different story. I fall asleep full of hope for another day of Super Woman productivity, only to find myself waking dazed and confused as my alarm goes off like the Covid Stage 4 emergency alert beside me. On days like this, I can concentrate for an impressive 20 minutes before I find myself wandering aimlessly around the house, just to check whether the furniture has changed, or just in case the thing I never ordered has turned up in the post.
On days like these I spend an extra half hour doing the jigsaw puzzle because it’s mindless, relaxing and good for my soul. And then I spend the rest of the afternoon antagonising over the extra time that I shouldn’t have spent on the jigsaw puzzle. On days like these, I feel unmotivated, frustrated with the world, and like D.W, find myself checking the clock every 5 minutes.
Even as a 1940’s teenager, D.W so innocently expresses what many of us are feeling right now. We’ll have good days and we’ll have BLAH days. There will be aspects of working from home that will suck. Despite having work to do, there will be days when we’ll be unmotivated to do any of it, and experience next-level cabin fever. We’ll miss your workmate ‘neighbours’ or the friendly face at our local coffee shop.
But, as D.W alludes to, there will be other, brighter periods where we’ll feel in complete control, in which it’s possible to get through “a surprising amount for one day”. We’ll find joy in unexpected aspects - whether its the extra half an hour to do the jigsaw puzzle; or the fact we have zero commute time, so can spend more time with our family, or exercising, or baking, or whatever it is that makes us tick. Maybe it’ll be the fact we can wear our exercise clothes all day errrry day, or that blissful walk in the sunshine on our lunch break. Or, like D.W and me - it’ll be the day(s) we spend sketching and making art - a great escape from the mandatory work.
And that’s the beauty of working from home.
You can make it work for you.
Soon enough the quarantine period will be over, and we’ll get to judge our efforts accordingly. Fortunately, unlike D.W, our efforts won’t be judged be by tallying up all the pages in our workbooks and comparing them to the students at the boarding house.
For us, it might be a celebration that we brought our work home from the office and we got it done. It might be a reflection on the the personal projects we were able to contemplate, or start, or complete. It might be in the progress we’ve made reading the stack of books by our bedside. It might just be the simple reflection that we got through the lockdown and came out the other end in a better headspace than before - well-rested, relaxed, with an appreciation for a slower pace of life.
Over time you’ll find a rhythm which enables you to get the best out of this time. We’ll all have different experiences and expectations of ourselves and that’s ok. From a freelancer’s point of view, just know that it’s normal for it to be a rollercoaster, and that whatever you’re doing, it’s enough right now.
K x