For a time, home was a window on the world—an odd encampment where we zoomed through business meetings, walked our kids through online schooling, and at the end of the day, struggled with a surfeit of solitude or too damn much togetherness. What will the balance of home and work look like in the months ahead? How do we manage the transition back to normal life? Here are a few simple rules.
Stop overcompensating.
During the pandemic, those of us who worked in service jobs, for non-profits, and from home, went into overdrive. For months, I was glued to the computer, putting in 65-hour weeks, eager to give others a leg up in the process of reinventing home. The themes I chose ranged from personal to the political. Men At Home explored how the other sex creates a sense of sanctuary, while At Home in America asked, Who feels at home in a divided country?
As each issue grew longer and more ambitious, I did it all–writing, editing, design, and social media—until this January I ended up in a cardiology clinic. There I learned that my heart was structurally sound but I was suffering from the perils of work-related stress.
I’m not the only one with pandemic burnout. In the past eighteen months, Americans have become even more obsessed with productivity. The average worker has learned what every freelancer knows in her bones: You work harder, and more intensely, when you work alone.
Researchers have now amassed a ton of data on “death by overwork.” Their biggest finding? America has been steadily catching up with Japan, a society that coined a special word for this kind of terminal exhaustion (karoshi).
A recent New York Times editorial warns of the “harmful medical, mental and social consequences of spending too much time on the job, calling to mind that old saw first recorded in the 17th century, All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
That should be revised to “makes Jack a dead boy,” according to a joint report from World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization. This new study confirms that working 55 or more hours a week is a “serious health hazard.”
So listen up. Deadline-itis is the new disease—and there is no vaccine.
Now is the time to question what we value and how hard we drive ourselves. Among the warning signs of overwork: Home ceases to be a safe haven. The living room is cluttered with references books and paper, and even sleep ceases to be a sanctuary.
Recently, I dreamt that I lifted a poor, emaciated gerbil off a spinning wheel, lovingly wrapped him in a soft blanket, and told him to have a good long rest. It was my first step back to sanity.
Be prepared to compromise.
During the pandemic, we learned to put up with one another’s quirks. When my fiancé and I holed up in a tiny cottage, his passion for cable news often collided with my need to sit quietly and empty out my mind. Eventually, we found a middle ground, tuning in to My Octopus Teacher and David Attenborough’s Blue Planet — programs that were both information-packed and a form of meditation.
When Covid restrictions lifted, we started looking for a house that would give us room to breathe. That’s when we experienced the shock of the “new normal.” For the last 18 months, families had been fleeing the city for the suburbs. As a result, there’s very little inventory. New listings are snapped up within 24 hours by cash buyers who are willing to pay as much as 20 percent over the asking price.
Thanks, Laura, we keep expecting things to “go back to normal,” but the world is in a state of flux and there are so many new patterns emerging. The wise person–and the resilient one—can tolerate not knowing. We need to be as kind to our own inner gerbils as you were to your sweet Charlotte and Fang.
Great article, Valerie, and so timely. My wife and I both work from home, so we weren’t affected or repositioned like many. As far as the real threat, my gut sense was it was a fallacious narrative attempting to upscale a corporate take-over. Regardless, I told my wife in late March of last year that I hoped the obsession on self-hygiene and the sequestration would cause folks to turn inward, like any behavioral mod process, and question their beliefs, ethics and morals for the future.
Within the following year the concept of regenerative community building and culture became a trend, mostly from the remote workers who now had the ability to live where and with whom they chose in developing community environments. New groups, such as the Global Regenerative CoLab (https://grc.earth) and Re:Build (https://re-build.co.. which now requires a membership, unfortunately), are cropping up to support the trend of remote workers migration.
Alas, even one of our potential ne’er do well leaders, Klaus Schwab co-authored a book – Covid 19: The Great Reset. In it he asked a pertinent question: Can we be caring and compassionate toward each other coming out of Covid? Albeit a kind of sideways question as the fallacious narrative came from within the membership of the World Economic Forum, we’ve still got to learn how to work together better. Now, we’re in a ‘forced’ position where many rise to the call. We work great under pressure… alone or in groups. I say we consider an alternative and, as my good friend Swami Beyondananda says, embark upon the Great WeSet.
Love the Great WeSet. We will all be lisping into the New Age. Appreciate your comments, as usual, Zen. Let us hope the pressure will create some diamonds…though my heart goes out to everyone in The Great Transition.
Wow! This is so good and literally a breath of fresh air of thought, like I opened my front door to the brave new world in the form of your words. Your dream about the gerbil reminded me of my 2 two childhood pet gerbils, Charlotte and Fang. When Charlotte passed, Fang went shortly after. It’s true, we do need each other. In many ways, now more than ever. However, as your writing so eloquently points out, what does that look like? Thanks Valerie.