As the vaccine roll-out accelerates and a return to “normal life” in the coming months seems increasingly likely, there’s a question I keep asking myself:
What will I miss about this strange, strange pandemic era?
One thing I know I will miss is the weird experience of getting to see inside so many people’s homes.
For some two dozen of my coworkers, I’m now intimately familiar with their home office—the exercise bike in the background, the (charming?) children’s art hanging on the walls, the expectant pooch tail-wagging on the couch—and I find a lot of comfort in this newfound familiarity. It’s worlds away from trying to “read” the cubicle knickknacks and family photos of their desks in the office, efforts which always seemed a little strained and staged, performative in a way I could never trust.
Before the pandemic era, many of us made conscious efforts to keep work and life separate. After years of careful wall-building, the pandemic pulled some crude demolition work and left gaping Zoom-sized windows in our walls between the self presented at work and at home (who might be, er, more real?).
All of a sudden, coworkers could see the strange wood built-ins of my previous apartment and, while maybe they had previously heard about her, my cat Jane was suddenly the unwitting star of nearly every one of my work calls, typically jumping up onto my shoulders and then refusing to budge. Some colleagues are so used to the sight that they bat not an eye, while new Zoom or Teams acquaintances will stifle a laugh when they realize what’s happening.
I will miss this—this faux intimacy. After all, it’s not as though I’m actually being welcomed into anyone’s homes. But, there’s still a charming oddity to popping into someone’s backyard or their living room for a meeting. I’m comforted by the certainty, though, that there’s a whiff of Pandora to the pandemic. In other words, now that we’re cracked open the possibility of remote work, I doubt that we’ll every truly return to “normal.” In all likelihood, we’ll continue to peek at each other’s homes through Zoom…just less frequently. And Jane can continue her cameo role in my working life, just part-time.
Taylor Coe 