Month: June 2023

I want to take a second to talk about my day job.  Sort of.  I’m not going into a great amount of detail about what I do, but I’m going to talk about where I do it.  The job I have is a work-from-home job.  I started working for this company in August of 2021, and I’m very happy with where I’ve ended up.   I’m making the money I was making before the pandemic, the bills are getting paid, and I have nothing to complain about.   

Almost. 

I want to talk to you about something I’ll call “Man on an Island Syndrome”, and the more and more I think about it, the more I think this is the source of the deep blue funk I’ve been in.  If you work from home, it’s very easy to get into a rut.  You sit on your ass in the office, you sit on your ass on the couch, you sleep, you eat, you gain 15 pounds, you get lethargic and don’t want to do anything, and then you get depressed, and when I say you I mean me all GD day.  

You, a human being that is hopefully blessed with two brain cells that fire in succession and a modicum of common sense, may know this to be true, and I am happy to tell you that you are right.   However, there have been times in my life when I didn’t HAVE two brain cells that fire and succession or even a quark of common sense, and THIS has been one of those times.   How do I know this?  Because on Monday I got the hell out of the house, drove up the Eastern Shore to Ocean City, cruised the Coastal Highway, and made a POV video of that drive for YouTube, and I felt amazing.   What this means is that I’m a creature of habit, and when I fall into a routine that gets comfortable it doesn’t mean it’s healthy.   Just the opposite.   I’ve been an advocate for the Work From Home Lifestyle as soon as it was established that productivity didn’t suffer as a result, contrary to what the PTB wanted to tell you.  I still believe it.   However, I can see a benefit to the hybrid setup.  3 days home two days office, for example.  There’s a need to get out of the house and deal with people closely every day, and I haven’t had to do that.  

The other thing that I’ve mentioned before is the vortex of suck you get drawn into when you have the self-awareness that you’re not ok but not the motivation to take care of yourself.  In my case, it’s the need to make sure everyone else around me is ok and ignore my problem.  I’m very, VERY good at that until it’s unavoidable.  For me, that means a day to myself to rest, to reflect, to reconnect with that part of me that wants to do stuff.    I used to be good about taking what some of you would call a ‘mental health day’ every couple of months or so just to recharge the battery.  I haven’t done that in a long time, and I need to get back to that.   

I don’t know if there’s a takeaway here other than to say Hi, it’s me, I’m the bad example, it’s me.   Take the time you’re given to take care of yourself, don’t stay cooped up in your damn house all day every day.  At the very least go do something you think you like to do.  The act of doing, of creating, or just going…you verb however you verb, but if you’re in my situation you might find that you feel better.