works of wanderlust

Tag: working from home

  • Kinda Secret Projects

    I haven’t been entirely forthcoming with my friends and family.

    In fact, there are very few people who I know in real life who also know that I write in this blog.

    Maybe… say… five people.

    I have no real good reason for not self-promoting other than that I wasn’t ready yet. Creativity and personal expression, particularly as you get older, is this balancing act between newfound not giving any effs, and realizing that your interests are straying further and further from popular culture and mass market interests. There is also the whole risk equation tied back to personal and professional reputation, but that’s a blog post for another day.

    Also, simply, I wanted to get my legs stable under me before I went telling everyone that “hey, look over here… I’ve been writing a blog you should all check out!”

    I’ve done that more than once in my life. Posting to the internet for twenty years often means you’ve racked up many projects and over-tapped the good will of friends and family.

    I’m not the only one who does this … is doing this kinda-secret-project thing right now … or so I found out.

    One of my colleagues, a guy who reports to the same boss as I do, revealed to the team yesterday that his New Year’s resolution made and kept was to start a podcast.

    He has posted nearly twenty episodes of a self-produced audio program… in secret… since the start of the year. The link went low-grade viral around the office chatter and I think he multiplied his subscriber rate by insert-coworker-count-here… speaking of, ahem, professional reputation.

    I was momentarily tempted to stick my hand up and say “hey, wanna read my blog anyone?” but the moment passed and he was in his moment, and maybe mine will come, too.

    Or whatever.

    I’m kinda enjoying my kinda secret project for now.

  • Downtown, Part One

    Is it out of character of me to write a short post about the heart of the place I live?

    See, I used to work downtown.

    Used to, in that the job I currently have the privilege to do from the safety of my home was once and may again in the future be based out of one of the many high-rise buildings in the downtown core of our city.

    Today it is based out of my basement.

    This allows me to go for beautiful walks around my neighbourhood at lunch.

    It lets me cook grilled cheese sandwiches on my barbecue grill whenever the mood strikes.

    I’ll have the opportunity to work on my garden all summer.

    I should be able to fit some extra runs in as the months wear ever onward.

    And sitting on my deck with my dog by my side, a coffee in my hand, and a laptop computer humming on the table in front of me is a kind of work-life balance I could not have dreamed possible a couple years ago.

    That said, this morning I made one of those rare trips “to the office” to sort out some administrative tasks that I cannot do remotely.

    On my walk towards my tower, I snapped a photo of one of those notice boards, the kind where shows, plays, festivals, and a thousand other cultural touchstones hang posters with dates and times and locations. Or… where they used to do that.

    Like the empty streets, boarded up shop windows, and mostly-vacant office towers, this felt positively apocalyptic to me.

    Nothing new posted.

    The old, ripped, torn, peeled off leaving behind a shredded, shattered mess, a snapshot of the time that never was to follow those months when back then, when I retreated from downtown along with a hundred thousand others.

    My personal opportunity has narrowed and I’ve adapted.

    I wonder how it will feel to find a way back to a rich cultural society, particularly when I see things like this.

    What was the opportunity cost of my could-have-been-worse fortunes?