As of this posting, I will have been working from home for a year, with no change in sight. Some of you have been in the same situation, give or take a few days, while others have gone back to school or work since. I posted some early thoughts after 9 days of what was originally supposed to be something lasting a few weeks, and I figured the opportunity was right to revisit that.

I had been curious about experiencing work-from-home full time to see if I would like it. I wasn't exactly asking for a global pandemic as a setting, but hey, you take what you can! Overall, I find my personal experience to be positive, as I'm still able to stay focused through the day. I prefer a quiet work environment, and on this point, being able to control the noise and distractions is nice. A major upside has been the loss of the commute, giving me more flexibility on how each day goes.

I'm still employed at the same location, as we haven't had any notable changes in personnel or company structure related to the current situation. I have since joined a different department, though, as the project I was involved in has been retired. I'm now paired with a team which is mostly located in Europe, so being physically present in the office wouldn't change much: emails, chats and voice calls would still be our primary lifelines!

One side-effect of always being at the same desk (day, night and weekends!) has been a urge to improve my setup. I have since installed my tablet as a third screen, dedicating it to Discord. My networking equipment and related devices have been tidied up and moved to a closet to remove clutter. I also bought a footrest to improve the ergonomics and sorted out all nearby drawers and shelves to be better organized, toss away unused items and let others be easier to find.

I just wish I hadn't left at the office that novel that I was reading, I was two-thirds of the way through...

#pandemic #work

– Doctacosa

Everyone has to have one, it seems, so why not!

On my end, the biggest difference in my day-to-day life is that the entire office has been asked to work from home unless absolutely required. This isn't a major shift for me as I had been working from home once a week for several months now, so I've got the process down. Five days a week instead of one feels different, of course, but I can still be productive and stay in touch with the members of my team! One very nice result is that I'm now saving about eight hours of commute time per week, and it shows every day: I now have more time to move my projects forward. Not bad!

With more people staying at home, there's been a noticeable increase of player traffic on several servers. I can't confirm for sure if this is the case for us yet as my player stats have been affected by a bug in the past few days, but I'm working to repair them. If anything, it feels busier than usual.

The one real consequence I'm facing at this point is minor, all things considered. I usually buy the monthly postcards every month, unless I pick up more designs while on vacation. However, all of the stores that I usually visit for these are either closed or will be closing later today, so my supply has dried up. Not to worry, though, as I'm already working on an alternative and they should be shipping out at the beginning of next month, as usual!

#pandemic #work

– Doctacosa