On March 10th, 2020, I gathered supplies for what I thought would be a three-month hunker in my house. Ha. I bought a sweater quantity of yarn, a pound of chocolate, and two books from the sci/fi slash mystery bookstore White Dwarf. It was a farewell tour of some of my favourite indoor places. At the time, it seemed a little melodramatic–maybe even silly–so I didn’t tell anyone what I was doing. But I believe in saying goodbye, and in retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t let feeling silly stop me.
This year, on March 8th, 2021, the US CDC released guidelines that say fully vaccinated people can gather together indoors. BC’s provincial health officer went one step further and said that Canadians wouldn’t necessarily have to wait for shot #2 before we can gather indoors in some capacity.
So I find myself thinking about the supplies I’m going to need to go out into a less socially distanced world.
Sewing pants topped the list. What better way to commemorate meeting people than making an article of clothing you can’t see on Zoom?
I love working remotely, but I am VERY EXCITED to see people in person. The first time I get to sit in a cafe and ignore my fellow human beings, I’ll probably be grinning like an idiot the entire time. Or ugly crying. Possibly I’ll be grinning while ugly crying. That will make me very popular, I’m sure.
Do you have post-vaccine plans? I’d love to hear about them. We’re so close.
What Does Any Of This Have to Do With Remote Work?
Not a ton. I actually planned to talk about how to discuss the pandemic on the anniversary of the lockdown. I’ve been hearing people in various industries talking about the gains remote work made during the pandemic. This is understandable. It’s in our nature to try to make sense of things that happen to us, to try and find a bright side to the last year. But if we’re not careful, we can start using phrases like “blessing in disguise” and “it turned out for the best,” and that would be wrong.
There is no world where my grandma dying from COVID was for the best. Many of us would gladly return the lessons we learned this year to get our loved ones back.
Remote work will continue into our post-pandemic world. And as I’ve said before, it’s the people with high emotional intelligence that thrive in this space. Our ability to “see” the people at the other end of our emails and texting platforms will help us do business effectively and humanely. Let’s remember that many of those people are grappling with losing loved ones and phrase our enthusiasm for remote work accordingly.
