Category: Writing

New Beginnings

Image of person with backpack walking down the road. Photo by Sharefaith from Pexels

Today is my last day at my day job. I’ve worked there for 12 years–most of my professional life. Had COVID not come along, I’d work there still. There was nothing personal about the layoff. It’s just one of those things that happened because of the pandemic.

I’ve made my peace. And I’m not the type of person that can stay sad–or at least, not only sad. This has been a tough year. I’m up to four dead relatives since April. Yet compared to many, I’ve been fortunate. Our family has enough food to eat and I’m sitting inside a warm house. There are people who love me and tell me so. I write things that people want to read.

On average, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for all the wonderful things in my life. And it’s rather poetic to end a career the day after the winter solstice. Things will literally get brighter from here on out.

And speaking of brighter things, watching footage of people getting vaccinated last week made me happy. So happy that it sent me into a dream sequence. What is a dream sequence, you ask? This thing I’m about to share with you right now. This flash fiction piece has nothing to do with remote work so if you don’t like frivolity feel free to skip to the next subheading.

Absurdist Fictional Interlude: I Dream of Vaccine-y

When it’s my turn to get the vaccine, my phone rings with the Mission Impossible theme song. A vaccinated Laurence Fishburne steps out of the bushes dressed as Morpheus and says “Get on it, my light brown sista!” 

I reach for my car keys only to discover that I’m dressed in a leather duster and black combat fatigues. My hair is perfect. I slide into the window of my sportscar like a Duke of Hazard and tear out of the parking lot, Boss Hog hot my tail. 

Traffic parts for me. I’m a one-woman police motorcade. Boss Hog gets stuck behind a downed taco truck, his shouts fading like cigar smoke as I speed away. 

I pull right up to the steps of the clinic and flip my car keys to the vaccinated valet. We’re at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. A vaccinated nurse in 80’s workout attire hands me a form, then I jog up the stairs to the Rocky song. Despite the leather coat and months of couch-surfing, I fly up the steps like Olympian marathoner Eliud Kipchoge.

The shot burns like freedom. It opens a portal to a new location, where I’m at the head of a Soul Train line. James Brown sings Get Up Offa That Thing. Vaccinated octogenarians dressed like candy stripers boogie on either side as I dance until I feel better. This is a three-month process. At the end of the train, I get a purple wristband with the word ‘Vaccinated!’ printed in sparkles. I join a congo line of the newly vaccinated, and we dance to the nearest bar, where we cram ourselves into a karaoke room and sing until the sun goes down. 

Things I’m Working On

I have two major writing projects. One of them is a book of personal essays about my time during COVID. Many of those are in first draft status. The other is the business book I talked about in my last post. I won’t have the outline done by end of the month, but I’ve decided I’m going to take a month or two to focus on the book before becoming an employee again.

This has been a big year for my writing. I submitted roughly 32 pieces out to 104 publications, and 26 of them were published. That doesn’t count writing on the blog or writing the keynote speeches I’ve given this year either. Nor the single-panel cartoons I’ve collaborated on.

This is why I keep a spreadsheet. I was feeling a little inadequate the other day–feeling like I hadn’t written as much as I wanted to write this year. But really, that’s just the inner mean voice talking. I took a look at that spreadsheet and told that voice to go take a hike. If you suffer from the same mean voice, maybe try keeping lists so you, too can throw data at it.

What’s That Douglas Up To?

I was on the Gifters Podcast in early December. This podcast asks guests to share a succinct gift with the world. We talked about remote work (for about 10 minutes), and managing interruptions from children.

I also wrote a bunch of different things, not all of which have been published yet. My fearless dog columnist Aggie is back in Good Girl, Aggie! (No3). I heard the phrase ‘twat waffle’ in a runner’s forum a few years back, and I’ve wanted to use it ever since. Aggie gave me that chance.

Right around Thanksgiving a squirrel got drunk on some fermented pears in Wisconsin, and fellow comedy writer Susan Sassi and I paired up to write I am Lil’Red, the Squirrel that got Drunk in Minnesota, and I need to Clear My Name. Someone asked me to describe our writing process for this one, and the best I could come up with was “a Google doc free for all.” We wrote it in 34 minutes, and then spent hours editing it. It was big fun.

This is Probably the Last Blog Post for the Year

If 2020 has taught me anything, it’s to hug my people while I can. My kids are on winter break and my husband’s workload is light. We’re going to eat cinnamon rolls, beat the crap out of a piñata, and enjoy each other’s company. We have fake mustaches and we aren’t afraid to use them.

The next installment of the blog will come out around Thursday, January 7th. Before I take my break I want to say thanks for reading the blog. I wish good things for you. I can’t wait to see what we all do in 2021.

The Importance of Empathy in the Workplace

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

I’ve been working remotely for more than a decade. And no matter how many great tech products come out to make remote work easier, I’m even more convinced that the ultimate success or failure of a remote company rests on the people.

Does your company feel like a safe place to try new things? Or is it the sort of place where colleagues swoop in to judge you for errors? There’s always the danger that a remote business will acquire trolls. The same conditions that allow trolls to flourish on social media–anonymity, a lack of empathy, and no oversight–can develop in a distributed company if we aren’t careful. Today’s post was going to be about how to build empathy for colleagues you don’t see every day. When I hit 1000 words and still had more to say, I decided to post it over on Medium. You can read ‘How to Build Empathy for Remote Colleagues–3 Techniques to ‘See People as Fully-Realized Human Beings’ using this friend link.

We live in difficult times, and when we feel anxious, it’s hard to remember that other people are also afraid, stressed, and generally not their best selves during a pandemic. Build empathy now for the people at the other end of those emails and instant messages. Doing so will lower the chances that you’ll ruin a relationship–or your career–when you’re too anxious to think straight.

I have a lot to say on this topic. If I get a few hours of quiet any time soon, I’ll figure out if what I have to say fits in a series of articles, a short ebook, or something longer. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Keynote

Last week I have the privilege of speaking to the Puget Sound Chapter of the Association for Talent Development. These folks are communications professionals, which meant we could take a deep dive into inter-colleague communication. I may be the presenter during these keynotes but I always feel like I learn something new from each engagement.

This time, one of the participants pointed out that we shouldn’t forget to provide equal resources to people going back into the office if we don’t want them to resent their remote colleagues. This is such a great point, I needed to share it with you. Equal resources can mean a lot of different things–schedule flexibility is the first thing that pops into my mind. The world of work has been turned upside down due to this pandemic. Let’s use this as an opportunity to ask what else needs to be changed.

Things I’ve Published

The ‘How to Build Empathy’ article is the only remote-related thing out there right now. The rest of my publications are all comedy. I wrote ‘Are You Getting Laid off or Divorced‘ back in September, after a round of layoffs at my company. ‘2020 or Country & Western Song‘ came to me when I thought of that old joke, what do you get when you play a country song backwards? You get your house back, your wife back, and your dog back. ‘MLMs and Mompreneurs: A Half Baked Recipe‘ popped into my mind when I thought about companies that prey upon women who want to raise their children AND be financially stable.

I partnered with a super talented illustrator/cartoonist to create this single panel cartoon we’re calling Retirement Fund. Which is also a good way to say that if you are a cartoonist, the comedy magazine Greener Pastures (where I am an editor) is accepting illustrations for our Saturday morning cartoons section. Woo!

And finally, ‘Paul Simon Finds 50 Ways to Leave Online School‘ has been playing in my head as an online school parody for almost the entire pandemic. I had to write it out so the parody would leave me alone already. I’m very proud of the fact that you can actually sing my lyrics to Paul Simon’s original song. My husband thinks I should actually sing this in real life, after learning the chords on my guitar. I’m not sure anyone needs that. The point was to get the song OUT of my head, not weld it into place.

Goings On in the Douglas Household

It only took about 8 tries to get this photo, which is a world record when you need kids to stand still, look at you, and stop touching their sibling. Alt Text: Two children and one man posed in front of a tree, with fall leaves all around.

On Saturday we attended a Zoom funeral for a relative. This was 2020 loss number three for our family, but it was the first one that my kids really felt. A wise friend once told me that however you feel after a death is the right way to feel. It was my privilege to pass that wisdom on. Another friend told me about a place in Japan where someone has an old style phone attached to a telephone pole. It’s impossible to make an actual phone call because the phone isn’t wired into any system. People go there to use the phone to say goodbye to relatives that have died. We don’t have that phone here in Canada, so my daughter wrote a poem instead. It helped.

As is true in most things, these weeks haven’t been all sadness. The temperature dropped enough for the leaves to change colours, and Vancouver is bathed in glorious light. This year I took Fall celebrations a little further by making my own apple cider. I’m a little embarrassed that it took so long to figure out how easy it is–just boil apples in water, add seasonings and sugar, and Bob’s your Uncle. And there’s nothing better than making a hot toddy on a cold night, out of cider you made yourself. Yesterday I sipped a hot toddy while knitting a sweater and I felt like I won Fall.

I hope you’re savouring your own small joys. I’ll see you next time.

Out In A Cabin In The Woods

This is not the literal cabin we’re staying in, but you get the idea. Photo by Eneida Nieves from Pexels

Happy Friday everyone! I’m writing this post from a small cabin on the Sunshine Coast. It’s been raining all day which seems pretty ironic now that I’m thinking about it. I wonder if the people who named this area had a sarcastic bent.

In any event, the area has mostly lived up to its name. We’ve been paddle boarding, kayaking, and generally enjoying the last days of Canadian summer. Fall is a gorgeous time of year here, but before the fiery colours of fall touch the maple trees, we will have days and days of rain. I need a few more days (or even weeks!) of hot sweaty weather before I can look forward to the crispness of Fall.

The kids, just before they stood up and paddled away from us.

Writings and Appearances

In between all off the summer frivolity I’ve been writing a lot. I have an article entitled ‘How to Build Influence to Improve Your Company Culture–Even if you aren’t in charge‘ up at Medium today. In it I share how I think about building influence in a company.

On August 10th I was on the Ask Sharifah show, talking about the issues of the day. This one wasn’t strictly related to remote work since there were six of us, and we were talking about things that entrepreneurs are most concerned with. But if you want to hear about how people transformed personal pain into nonprofit work, or why you need to work on your website, this might be the episode for you.

On August 8th my piece ‘Choose Your Own adventure: K-12 Back to School, Pandemic Edition‘ went live on Humor Outcasts. This one is on the more ‘biting’ end of the satire spectrum. I also co-launched a comedy publication with some of my fellow satirists from my Second City class on August 17th. It’s called Greener Pastures Magazine, and you can read a fake column I wrote from the perspective of the Greener Pastures’ mascot, Aggie Green. It’s called ‘Good Girl Aggie! An advice Column from Man’s best friend.’ It’s basically gentle comedy, because Aggie is a Very Good Girl. Check out some of the other work published there. My fellow writers are a talented bunch. I’ve always wanted to be an editor for a magazine, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity.

Change Is In the Air

I’m enjoying these last few weeks of August, because changes are coming to Douglas HQ. I’m not quite ready to give details on that yet. As with any big change, this one touches a lot of other people. But I hope to have more for you soon.

Until then I wish you well from a quiet little corner of the BC countryside.

Performance Reviews and Robots

Photo by Retha Ferguson from Pexels

Good morning! I’m writing a short post today to share some of the writing I published last week in other places. I was working on a different post for today but sadly, my time this week was spent kicking some spam bots off my blog.

Incidentally, if you’re a subscriber who hasn’t re-subscribed to my blog AND clicked the link in the confirmation sent to your email (I sent out a note about that Monday July 20th), this is the last one you’ll get in your email before I retire the old list. You can sign up again over on the right side of my website. Check your spam folder for the confirmation email. Dang bots.

How Do We Rate People Working in a Pandemic?

In this article, I talk about whether we should hold people accountable for underperformance during the current crisis. Managers, please ask yourself, ‘Is this person really the problem, or am I trying to fire the virus?’

Satire About Micro Managers

Last month I enrolled in a satire class from The Second City. Before I did so, I wrote a comic personal essay about finding accidental alone time via dyeing my hair in my bathroom. I realized after writing that essay that I don’t really know the common structures for humour. So I remedied that gap in my knowledge. Humour–especially short humour–is a tricky beast. Which makes it addictively interesting if you’re me.

In any event, I published this piece on a humour site called Robot Butt. Satire is the humour of outrage, and it probably comes as no surprise that I am outraged by micromanagers.

Summer Writing

I’d forgotten what life was like before I had to educate my children and work at the same time. The kids’ last day of school was June 25. A week after school ended I wrote both of the pieces linked to this article, plus an assigned article that hasn’t been published yet, and a couple of satire pieces that aren’t yet ready to shop around. It’s like all of the creative energy I funnelled into making my circumstances work turned into a creative writing tsunami.

Summer Learning

I swore that I wasn’t going to put my kids into online summer camp. We’ve had enough online class to last us the entire summer, thank you very much. Then I saw a ‘how to make mods in Minecraft’ class that had some good reviews and decided to let the kids do that for a week.

And you know what? The class was fabulous. And required very little involvement from me. I shouldn’t be surprised by this. When you approach remote work thoughtfully, you can have great outcomes. I’ve been living that dream for the last 10+ years. Remote learning is no different. If there are educators or decision makers reading this, please–for the sake of kids and parents everywhere–spend this summer researching how established online schools run their classes.

Pandemic Pets

We’ve also become the people who get pets in a pandemic. It’s Friday morning as I write this, and I’ll find out this afternoon if the pet rats we’re getting from a breeder are ready to go home with us.

I made the mistake of telling the kids about the rats two weeks ago. In my defence, I had to set up the three storey rat palace in their bedroom, and that isn’t the kind of thing you can tell them to ignore. The rats were supposed to be ready for us last Friday. If you have kids, you can imagine what happened when we found out that they weren’t ready yet. Here’s hoping I have better news for next week’s blog.

Diverging Paths

Last week my daughter’s best friend moved to another country, and I spent time helping her deal with that separation. I’m no grief counselor, but a wise person once told me that whatever you feel while grieving is the right way to feel. It’s a sentiment that’s helped me during my own grief, and I think it’s helping my girl through hers.

There have been a lot of diverging paths this week. Today (Thursday) is the last day of school for both of my children. BC managed to bring students back into the classroom for a month without creating COVID outbreaks. It’s a tremendous accomplishment. I’m happy about that, and frankly, happy to stop homeschooling my kids. Here’s hoping the public school system takes the next two months to figure out how to streamline online learning, creating a system that does not assume there’s a parent available full-time to educate the children.

Everyone did the best they could in an unexpected situation. But now it’s time to iterate and do better.

Dropping Things Left and Right

This week I also left the writing group I’ve been with for about a year. They’re a lovely group of people, but not the right fit. Back in my twenties I would have agonized over the decision to leave my writing group. I would have second-guessed myself, wondering if the problem was me, if I was just being too picky or demanding.

Gosh I’m glad I’m not in my twenties any more. All that second guessing is exhausting. Now that I’m older, I know that that some relationships end. And I chose to leave before I could start resenting the group for not being the right fit. I have no doubt they’ll do just fine without me, as they all knew each other before I showed up.

I Fed the Beast

Lastly, I finally took the writing path I’ve been avoiding for the last few months. I spent some time trying to write about my grandmother. After a great deal of effort I have exactly one sentence. That wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought I would vomit words onto the page, have myself a good cry, and save the document to edit later. Instead I ran headfirst into a brick wall and bounced off of it.

Apparently that was enough blood to feed the creativity beast, because I wrote a third of a management article this afternoon, and I only stopped in order to write this post. Did I mention that my creativity can be a jerk sometimes? This was another one of those times. My plan is to post the article on Medium when it’s done. I’ll add a link here when I do.

This isn’t me giving up on writing about my grandmother. I can feel the seedling of that story sort of working its way through my subconscious. When it’s ready, I’ll write it. In the meantime my management writing mojo is back, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

Feed Me, Seymore

Temporarily child-free in Vancouver BC. Photo by author.

On Sunday June 7th, in the year of our pandemic 2020, I went to the beach. It was the first time I’ve left the house by myself (not counting errands) since mid February.

I didn’t believe that either until I dug through my photos in Dropbox and found the picture I took on my last day of leisure. I’ve been outside a lot this pandemic, but usually, I have the kids in tow, or I’m out running, trying to exercise my way to a calm state of mind. It’s effective but not what you’d consider leisure.

This photo of Vancouver in February could have the alternate title of ‘why the rest of Canada hates on us.’

To understand why this matters, I have to talk about my creativity. Ask five different makers to describe their creativity and you’ll probably get five different answers. Mine is a plant. Like all growing things, it requires certain nutrients to produce fruit. Most of those I get from reading different things. Books, articles, Twitter discussions–all of that acts like fertilizer for the plant.

Alone time is my plant’s catalyst.

If I spend some silent time away from people and the internet, I come back ready to write. Sometimes I’ll even come back with an epiphany.

Sunday’s epiphany was a little uncomfortable. You see, I haven’t written a remote work article since March. Ordinarily I write several a month, in addition to posting here on the blog. I even have notes and interview material that I collected back at the end of February for an April article.

I’ve been blaming homeschooling for the lack of business articles. And that’s a factor. It’s hard to string together coherent sentences when you’re interrupted every 2-3 minutes. But that can’t be the whole answer, because I’ve managed to write six different pieces in twelve weeks, not including this blog.

Then on Sunday, as I lay on the beach reading The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr, the answer was there in my mind, almost as if it had been waiting for me to be quiet enough to hear it.

My grandma died on April 12th, and I haven’t written a business piece since. I need to write about my grandmother’s death. Not here, but in a personal essay. My creativity has decided that it’s the next story, and I get no more business article mojo until I clear the queue.

My creativity can be a jerk sometimes. But I’ve learned that it’s useless to ignore it. Especially if it’s holding my business article ideas hostage. My creativity plant has morphed temporarily into that Audrey 2 plant from Little Shop of Horrors. It’s out for blood.

Here’s hoping I can shake some loose this weekend.

Moments of Gratitude

Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a picture of chili? Please squint and pretend this is it. Photo by Naim Benjelloun from Pexels

I made chili the other night in my Instant Pot. It’s a pretty easy meal, and I get a lot of good press from the kids when I make it, so chili shows up in the Douglas house often for dinner. I’ll play with the types of beans I use, but on Tuesday I used all kidney beans. The kids like their chili topped with cheese and chopped raw onions (I am as flabbergasted as you are about this. Raw onions? They’ve been known to turn up their noses at bananas that are the wrong shade of yellow) so the chili was a very pretty deep red with dots of yellow and white.

Part way through chopping the onions my eye started itching. My hand twitched toward the vicinity of my eye, but as is so often the case these days with all of us, I reflexively squashed the urge to touch my face.  

I was busy loading chili into bowls while stopping the kids from eating the cornbread before I put it on plates, so it took a minute for me to realize that social distancing saved me from rubbing onion juice straight into my eyeball.

We’re still in the middle of a pandemic, but I’ll take all the opportunities for gratitude I can get. I had a few good ones this week.

Flame Thrower Store

On Wednesday the entire family went for a walk in the afternoon sunshine. This sounds idyllic, but as any parent can tell you, you have five seconds of peace before the children start fighting, complaining, or fighting and complaining while trying to crawl all over things that don’t belong to them. Or one tries to run ahead while the other walks as slow as possible. At one point I threatened to give my son extra pages of math to do if he didn’t straighten up. He replied that he would just go to the flame thrower store and get a flame thrower to burn up all of his math.

The entire family had a good laugh over the idea that someone would open up a flame thrower store at all, let alone one that was open to children. My son didn’t even seem to mind the gentle ribbing. He’s an extrovert and any attention is better than no attention.

I won’t lie; trying to work and parent and home school all at the same time is tough. But in the middle of the stress, there are golden moments of relaxation that I wouldn’t access without kids. None of the adults I know want to talk about how to turn wood into weapons that Ewoks can use. I’m not sure I do either, but I love getting a sneak peak at how my child’s mind works.

Free eBook

I was also pretty excited that the ebook version of Working Remotely: Secrets to Success for Employees on Distributed Teams is free through April 21st in both the US and Canadian Amazon stores.

My book is traditionally published. This means that I’m not fully in charge of what can be done with it. My publisher is great, and I get royalties every time someone buys a book, but I can’t decide to make it free unless my publisher agrees. Not only did my publisher agree, they asked me if we wanted to make the book free before I got up the nerve to ask them. Feel free to download a copy, and tell your friends. I’m glad to help folks who may need some pointers during this crazy time.

The Writing Well Isn’t Dry, But It’s Slow Flow

In his book Creative Quest, Questlove describes his creativity as the state of cultivating openness vs trying to pull something up from the depths. For me, creativity is a little bit of both. I have to be open and notice things, but then I have to let whatever it is percolate through me before trying to write about it.

This process requires a certain amount of solitude and silence. Both of these have been in short supply during the pandemic. I’ve been trying to work within my constraints–I wake up early and read in bed, and go running as often as I can–but it’s hard to notice things when someone wants to talk to me every moment of my day.

It was such a gift to sit down last Friday and decide to write, and to actually have my creativity cooperate. I wrote half of a story in a few hours, and then finished it on Saturday with very little fanfare. I hope some day soon I’ll get to show it to you.

There are a lot of things to be upset about these days. Sometimes though, it’s good to act like artists of our own lives, and choose to focus on the small good things that surround the bad. What are you grateful for? I’d love to hear about it.

Remote Book Relaunch

A Peak Behind the book publishing curtain

You need a lot of fuel to get a rocket into space. You need nearly the same amount of caffeine to launch a book. Photo by Pixabay from Pexels.com

My book for remote employees is going to launch with Simon Schuster in January 2020. I’ve known about this for some time, but we had to hit a certain point in the book launch process before I could share details with you. Today, as a thank you for sticking with me during the great blog post slowdown of October/November 2019, I want to give you a peak behind the book launch curtain.

The Book is Getting a New Title

My co-authors and I signed a book contract that says our publisher has the right to change the title if necessary. This is The Way Things Go in traditional publishing, and I have no problem with it. Titles aren’t my forte. I don’t know how a person can write a book and post articles (nearly) every week for more than a year and still have trouble coming up with good titles, but that’s me in a nutshell.

We’re really lucky that our original indie publisher 750 is committed to keeping its authors looped in as much as possible. Instead, they gave us Simon Schuster’s feedback and let us propose another title.

If you or anyone you know is thinking of writing a business book, Simon Schuster thinks that the best business book titles are clear. The title should not only tell you what the book is about, but who it’s for. I love our old title ‘Secrets of the Remote Workforce,’ but that doesn’t tell you who the book is for. We fixed that with the new title.

Is the title of the book sexy? No. But it does tell you what you’re going to get and I like that.

May I present Working Remotely: Secrets to Success for Employees on Distributed Teams. Holly, Mike and I came up with this title the same way we wrote the book. We proposed different titles, talked through what we liked and disliked, and came up with something together.

For those who aren’t familiar with the book, we discuss how to survive and thrive as a remote employee. We cover how to set up your office, how to combat loneliness, and how go grow in your career when you work from an office of one.

The Team Has a Publicist

Publishing a book is a little surreal. Most people have opinions about the things they’ve done. Some of us decide to write a book about what we know. We believe we wrote a book with a lot of useful information to share with remote employees. We spent a lot of time making sure we covered remote-specific topics. On some level, though, it’s still surprising that a traditional publisher agreed to release our book out into the world.

Getting a publicist brings the surreal feeling to another level. We have access to an expert to help us get the word out about our book. That’s pretty neat. I collect skills the way crazy cat ladies collect cats, and I can’t wait to see what I learn from this experience. We’re working on a few things that aren’t quite ready to talk about yet, but I look forward to sharing them with you in due course.

While you CAN have too many cats, you can’t have too many skills. Anyway that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Photo by Pixabay from Pexels.com

Did you like this sneak peak? Leave me a comment to let me know either way. Is there anything about book publishing you would love to know about? Leave that question in the comments. If there’s enough interest in the business side of book publishing I’ll post other tidbits as we gear up to launch the book.

On to the Next Book

Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels

Greetings from Autumnal Vancouver! It was 8 c Tuesday morning (that’s 47 f for the Americans), and if I could bottle the buttery light that poured through the branches of the Douglas Fir trees near my house, I would have sent it to you.

The rain will be back–I live in a temperate rain forest–but for now we’re in shorts with sweaters weather. Is this a Pacific Northwest specific thing? It’s not the most fashionable way to handle this transitional season, but I support wearing hand-knit sweaters.

And speaking of transitions, and slowing down, the cadence of this blog is going to slow down for the month of October. I have a second book to write. I know my topic, and the research I need to conduct. I’ve known for months. The only problem is that I’m not doing it. This blog will come out every other week instead of every week so I can dedicate solid chunks of time to writing.

Once I get rolling on my research, I’ll have plenty of material for both the blog and the book. So (for now) I plan to go back to weekly blog posts in November.

So What’s the Book About?

I’m so glad you asked. I’m looking at psychological safety in the remote workforce. There’s a lot of good research out there about the benefits of psychological safety in uncertain times. There’s even research on creating a sense of safety inside a company. I want to discuss how we might do this in the remote work context.

There’s more to what I’m going to write but I’m not going to outline it here. If I talk about my book in too much detail, it makes it harder to write. Some people write books by plotting everything out. Others write by the seat of their pants. The writing world calls these two groups plotters and pantsers. I am a plantster. I outline a bit, then write, then outline a little bit more and write.

Writing a book is like hiking. I like to pick my destination point but let the research tell me which pathways I should use to get through the woods. The blog will be the place where I drop little breadcrumbs along the way.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy the view.

What I Wish School Staff Knew About Remote Working Parents

Photo by Emma Bauso from Pexels

Yesterday I nearly forgot to pick up my kids from school. My only excuse is that it was their first full day back. I had finished work for my day job and was deciding between writing or practicing my guitar when I remembered that I had somewhere to be. 

Technically, I could have waited a little longer before driving to the kids’ school, but I knew that if I left home early enough I could write in the pick up line while I waited. The plan would have worked perfectly, too, if it hadn’t been for those dang kids. My son was on the playground and he saw me drive in. At that point he and his friend spent a good two minutes trying to get my attention before the supervision aide told them to “let your mom chillax in the car!” 

While I appreciate the sentiment, that innocent comment reminded me of all the assumptions school staff make about parents generally and remote workers in particular. We may look like we’re all scrolling through social media in the car, but the truth is a little more nuanced. If you work at a school and want to get more participation from the remote working parents, then here are some things you should know.

Summers Are Stressful 

We remote workers usually have more flexible jobs than our office-based spouses. This usually means we’re the ones who’ve spent the summer attempting to work while the kids are home. It’s tempting to say that teachers work surrounded by children all the time and seem to do okay. However, children are the work in this case, so the comparison isn’t a good one. Picture holding a sensitive parent/teacher conference in the middle of a classroom while surrounded by all the other children in the class. Now picture doing so for 8 hours a day for 40 days. Summers aren’t restful. 

School staff will have a better chance of getting remote workers involved in school activities if they assume we’re exhausted and behind at work. We do want to meet our children’s teachers and school staff. We don’t want to come to multiple events scheduled closely together. Instead of holding a meet the teacher event one week and a back to school BBQ the next, combined those two events into one meet the teacher BBQ. Please and thank you.

Our Remote Jobs Are Real Jobs

I no longer tell my children’s teachers that I work from home. I used to, but I had one particular teacher who took this as a euphemism for ‘unemployed and available for last minute requests’. Now I tell them that I work full time and leave it at that. 

This is a lost partnership opportunity both for me and for any school who has parents that work remotely. We remote workers can flex our schedules around to a greater or lesser extent. Give us enough notice, ask respectfully, and many of us will move things around to help you out. We know that schools are under funded and rely on parent participation to get work done. Some of us chose remote work in order to get more involved with our children’s lives. But that doesn’t mean we can drop everything to attend a field trip with 48 hours notice. 

Be Strategic with Your Requests

Personally, I either need to work late into the night or use a vacation day to make room in my schedule for you. Other remote workers might have to work on the weekend or take a pay hit. There is always a cost. The shorter the notice, the higher the cost. We’re much more likely to volunteer if we can trust that you will minimize that pain for us. 

You’ll Get A Faster Response From Us If You Go Digital

Not everyone has access to the internet at home. I am not suggesting that digital communication replace paper communication. Rather, give us the option to choose electronic communication over paper. Someone creates 90% of those forms on a computer anyway. Send them to us via email or upload them to the school website. 

100% of my children have lost paper permission slips. I think their back packs eat them. It would be really great if six year olds could responsibly manage their own paperwork and day planners. But even some university students can’t do that consistently and they have a much better grasp on reality. My kids don’t always know what day it is. Once, when my son was six, I interrupted him in the middle of tying a jump rope around his neck. The other half was already tied to the stair railing. He thought this was a great way to jump off of the top of the stairs without killing himself. Teaching my kid to give me notices is a lower priority than keeping him from dying. There are only so many hours in the day. 

That may look like an ordinary back pack, but it’s really where permission slips go to die. This is also the only first day of school picture my kids allowed me to share on the internet.

Digital Payments Are a Thing

Last year my children’s school gave us the option to pay for school expenses online. It’s wonderful. Now I get an email when I need to pay something, and I go in and do so. This cuts down on the number of phone calls I get from the school asking if I will allow my daughter to go on the field trip I didn’t even know about. Canadians are indeed a polite people, but they can weaponize that politeness like you wouldn’t believe. I only wish the website came with the ability to sign permission slips, too. A woman can dream. 

Digital Communication is Also a Thing

And speaking of dreams, many of us would love to sign up for things like parent/teacher conferences electronically. Please don’t make us sign a paper taped to the classroom door. Trying to find a parking space at the school during pick up or drop off time is like going to fight club. I have seen people pull up onto the sidewalk right in front of small children, or speed the wrong way down the two lane road, just to grab the last spot in the loading zone. Don’t make me leave the car protecting me from those people. 

I would love to tell my children’s teachers that I have a flexible work schedule. Remote work provides greater opportunity for parental involvement at school. Maybe some day things will change. However, that can only happen if there is respectful, efficient communication between school staff and parents. That sort of healthy relationship starts with a few tweaks to existing assumptions about remote workers. School staff should plan school events strategically. They should provide a variety of options to communicate, pay for items, and sign up for events. If they do so, they may find that more parents—not just remote workers—become more involved in school activities, to the benefit of the children.