Being At Home Long Term

A review of being at home long term for several months during current events

I, like most of Ireland and the world, have probably spent a good chunk of time cooped up at home. Some of us had the choice, others didn’t as they were simply too vulnerable. Irrespective of the level of personal lockdown you had to enforce, I decided it would be interesting to sort of review my time spent at home over the last few months. Right now, I could very much go almost anywhere within the Republic of Ireland, but really, I have no big reason to and I’ll explain more on that in this post.

I consider myself to have been in some level of lockdown since early March. I had just returned to work after being away for several weeks and somewhat promptly the first cases were declared in the locality. So, the office was going to be closing up anyway and I elected to start working remotely before that was confirmed. Then as time went on, dates were set and then pushed back both locally and globally as an organisation and I just settled in for the long haul. One of the first things I tried to tackle was correcting my work environment. Initially, it was just the desk in my bedroom which wasn’t ideal. Spending eight or so hours a day working in a room, then changing the input on my monitor to my gaming desktop for the rest of the evening. It just wasn’t healthy, so I managed to get a room at home converted to a little office and that’s where I have been for work ever since.

I’ve talked about my work situation before, but at a personal level, most of the time lockdown was alright. My overall hobbies and lifestyle even before this all started were mostly set in the home. Apart from side projects, I do play a lot of games and they’re an incredible escape from everything. The time spent gaming naturally increased but I was perfectly fine with that. I had issues with consuming too much public news at the time and it just wasn’t helping my mental health. Eventually, I just removed those sources of news and focused on my hobbies. I only checked in when I wanted to and that really helped. While lockdowns have eased a bit, my hobbies and lack of office travel mean I don’t really have motivation to go outside for a day trip or what have you. Overall though, I know that I should have spent a lot more time outside in the fresh air. Things could have been done much, much better in that regard. If there was more time spent outside, I think I would have been more balanced and overall just in a better place. But I try to not dwell on these mistakes of the past.

One thing I try to do is replace the trips I used to make to the shop when I was in the office with the guys. Sure, it wasn’t a long walk those trips, but it still removed me from the context of work a little and got me out and about. While I’m not back in the office yet, I hope to just go down to the local village into the shop there and buy something small. It won’t be the complete same, but it will at least be something closer to normality as it were all those months ago. Hopefully soon if things continue to improve, trips to the office and the shop will start again. I see myself continuing my remote working for the majority of the time over the next six to twelve months, but I think it will be a remote-office hybrid model that I hope to share some thoughts on too in the coming weeks.