"Working from home....

 ....or living at work?"

That's actually a question I've seen a few people pose in essays recently, with the whole WFH thing.

And yet, I also see lots of people praising WFH - for one thing, it's certainly accommodating to disabilities in the way going in to work isn't (especially things like noise sensitivity, or difficulty interacting face to face, or certain mobility disabilities where you have your house set up to work for you). And some people say they love being able to have more leisurely lunches, or attend to chores on downtimes. 

I will say: I don't love it. I was glad to get back to my office when it was possible. I was glad to get back to the classroom. EVEN on the days when no one shows up in person and I'm talking to a computer. 

Part of this is simple practicality: I have a small house. It's like 1250 square feet. Yes, I have a spare bedroom but it is currently used as a storage room and there is NO space. I don't have a home office. The two "candidates" for home office would be the spare bedroom, which would mean my either renting a storage unit (an outlay of more money each month) or divesting myself of MANY books and much accumulated yarn. And even then, I'd have a small space because that's where a spare bed is, and where my cross-country ski exerciser is. The other "candidate" would be my sewing room - and again, to cut down on "temptations" not to work, I'd have to divest myself of fabric and craft books. AND the Wi-fi doesn't reach there as well - Oh, I still get it, but it's down a semicircle or two. 

So when we were forced to wfh, I wound up buying a desk for the corner of my living room. My original plan had been to get a writing desk (I thought that back in late 2019) but then I thought of rearranging my bedroom and putting the writing desk in my back window, that looks over the backyard. Well, because of Reasons I did not want to broadcast classes from my bedroom, so my living room became my office.

There is not a lot of open space there - it's a sizable room, but I also have a 7' baby grand piano in it, and a futon couch, and bookshelves.

For much of the wfh period last spring, I was "teaching" with my computer on the closed lid of my piano - the only place of sufficient height with me standing - and I had a *tiny* bit of pacing-space in the room. And yes, I need to pace when I teach. It helps me think. But it just wasn't a practical space, and that space got VERY messy as I printed things out, and stacked up textbooks, and everything. 

If I were going to have to wfh forever, I'd either have to rent a storage locker and clear out the guest room to the point where I could set up in there, or just give up my sewing room to it - or, more likely, petition the city to get a variance to put an insulated and climate-controlled shed (with electricity and a connection to the cable modem - wifi doesn't reach that far) in my backyard to teach from. And hang up a whiteboard in there, and have it be long enough in one dimension at least so I could pace.

But also, for me, there's a psychological cost to wfh. I tend to over-identify with my job, to the point where, if things are going badly at work, I feel like my whole life is going badly. And I do tend to feel guilty when I take time off from working. So I need separation between home and work. I suspect a small part of my sleeping badly last spring was not JUST being freaked out by the pandemic, but the lack of a psychological separation between "work time" and "home time," and I did feel a bit as if work had invaded my house. 

I find that wfh makes it hard for me to relax.

So that's why I cringe at the people who go "LONG LIVE WORK FROM HOME! EVERYONE SHOULD DO IT **FOREVER**!!!"

Okay, fine: maybe you should do it forever if you want.

But please don't force me to. (And it would be miserable to be the lone "I want to go in to the office" person in a workplace - you'd probably be forced into WFH, because the company would sell off their facilities. And that's another thing: fundamentally, the cost of electricity, heating, cooling, extra water, etc., are being offloaded onto the individual worker. I mean, there's a gross old rhyme about "boss makes a dollar, I make a dime..." that could be taken as "the company pays for the water in the washroom, so you don't have to" and while that's only a tiny bit of the cost of doing business from home....well, I am sure I wasn't alone in turning the heat down (in the winter) or the AC warmer (in the summer) when I left the house for the day because not heating an empty house saves money)

I just found that I felt very "constrained" in teaching from home (not enough space, not enough 'difference' from where I lived) and also, I felt I could not relax happily "off the clock" because work worries penetrated my living space (more than they do, normally).

Granted: I am very lucky. I have an extremely short commute to work - about five minutes on a good day. If I forget something at home, I can run home and get it. If I have a couple hours between classes, I can go home for lunch if I want. 

But I don't want an even shorter commute! Like, from my bedroom to my living room. 

If some bizarre thing happened - like, suddenly, there was a 100% vaccine-escape mutant, and we were informed we'd be working solely from home for the next five years, I WOULD get a shed built in the backyard (or somehow upgrade/convert my garage, which might be simpler than a new build) and use that as an "office" because I could not stand having the 10 or so square feet of my living room around the desk be my "office" forever. 

That's a problem with one-size-fits-all solutions: they really don't. Yes, some people are served really well by working from home, and in as much as it's possible, they should be able to continue. But the rest of us should not be forced into that because suddenly it's more "profitable" (or "cost-saving," if you're technically a non-profit) to require people to use their own wifi and their own climate control and their own space to do their jobs....