Work With Me

 My mornings are usually pretty consistent; mostly because of Kevin. If left to my own devices then it's a Spin the Wheel of Chaos.

The day starts when his alarm goes off at 5:00 am.  I send him off to work because I am the good 1950's housewife.  

At 5:20 I am making myself coffee and getting something to eat.  This varies from a muffin to nothing, depending on the day.  By the way, my keurig is stuck in descaling mode for months now.  Kevin fixed it by putting tape over the flashing "decsaling" button.

By 5:30 I am at my desk working. Let me say right here: this would NEVER happen if I had to work in an actual office. NEVER.   This is only possible because I'm alone, in my pajamas, with chicken head, and no verbal ability requirement.

My work is usually pretty consistent.  There's usually emails with requests, documents that need reviewed and entered, and some mindless data entry.  Sometimes it's A LOT and sometimes it just a normal amount.  Right now, it's super slow because it's later in the school year.  In about a month, everything will ramp up again as we get into Kindergarten readiness and closing out the school year.

You know those - what I call parallel play - people on social media that go live and you work along with them?  It's usually a desk scene with someone working and a timer and music playing.  It's kind of soothing and does work when I'm in that mindset of Not Being Able to Concentrate.  Unless they have a clickity clackity keyboard, then I'm out. It's too much sensory input and I realized as I'm writing this: trauma from learning how to type in high school.  (I nearly flunked two classes in high school, typing and Trig.)   

Timers don't always work for my alphabet brain; if I'm concentrating I need to keep working while my brain is cooperating.   My smart watch has a timer that tells me I've been sitting too long.  Most of the time I ignore it or do a few stretches so it thinks I've moved.

There are a few tools that I use to focus.  Right now I have a mix of 80's and 90's music playing just on the regular speakers.  If it's something that requires absolute concentration then I use my headphones.  If it's mindless data entry, I'll play Grey's Anatomy in the background.  Every once in a while it will just be silent but that's usually when I'm so tired/overwhelmed that I can't take any more sensory input. See: this entire school year.

I've also gone onto a specific social media page and scrolled while working.  I'm super into Museums on social media right now, for instance.  I can mostly listen and occasionally glance at the screen for context.

For Christmas, Kevin gave me a cup warmer.  I put it on my list thinking it was frivolous and would I even use it.  I SO USE IT.  It's so nice to just have a warm cup at any point. (especially for tea)  I highly recommend it.  I have an orange colored Yeti but it keeps it too hot and I'm suddenly Goldilocks.

I've mentioned before that I have three monitors and I'm continually surprised at how helpful this is.  Database on one screen, spreadsheet on another, then email/forms/Grey's Anatomy on the other. I honestly can't think of a single thing that has improved my work more than adding a monitor.  And yes, I've caught myself thinking "another monitor could be useful right now"  #Ihaveissues

Anyway, I work for about three hours in one sitting.  It's so early that I'm working before my brain is fully booted up and realizing what is happening and can stage a rebellion.  After three hours of work, the rest of my coworkers are starting their day.  It's a good configuration because I can have things addressed well before they've even gotten to the office.

Then I finally shower and officially become a human.  I won't say how many years it took for me to realize that time counts as my "lunch" break.  Then if work is still busy, I'll sit down for a while more.  If it's not, I'll do chores and tasks around the house while keeping an eye on my work.

Lucy insists on walkies about 11:30 and is horrified if I'm still working at noon.  So everyone knows I'm unavailable from 11-ish to 1-ish.  My day is usually mostly done by then but not always.  And we don't always go walkies and that is the worst day ever for Lucy.

Because I work part time and from home, I consider myself "on call" for the rest of the day. Staff are welcome to text - or call, sigh, if they must. (Don't Teams me, it's never open and I hate it) So during the afternoon, I check my email and address anything that comes up.  There are days where I win and nothing is happening (like today, for instance) and there are days where work wins and I'm sitting here all day.

Like the other day I was having a technical difficulty with one of the databases I use.  I got the dreaded "Can you jump on Teams real quick?"  SIGH.  I will just deal with the issue, please just don't.  But I did.  Now, this is where I say that I have a camera and have had said camera since the beginning of the school year.  Have I installed it?  Nope. But I did take it out of the box.  (I did zoom on my own laptop, back in the pandemic days)

So, I have audio but no camera.  This actually works for me.  I have to share my screen and I hear "Ah!!! WHY is your cursor SO BIG!"  (which sounds a little p*rny, lol)  "Because I am blind" I reply and that ended that conversation awkwardly.  

(Also, did you know that is an option?  Microsoft button/Settings/Accessibility/Mouse Pointer.  You can change size, color, blinking or static, shadow.  It's kind of fun.  Anyway, mine is huge and purple. It's incredibly help with three screens)

We fixed the issue and then I emailed IT to install my camera.  I had 90s-2000s music playing and left so IT could log into my computer.  Thought nothing about it.  When I returned, I see that IT had just finished and I can hear "Hi! My Name is, what? My Name is, who? My Name is chka-chka, Slim Shady."  Sooooo professional of me.  (IT was fine, btw)

Now I have a camera and I left it attached to my monitor for one entire day.  Then the GEN X in my went NOPE and it now resides on my cpu until I need it.  But I have it.

Social Media reminded me that the pandemic was six years ago.  It is what started this working from home thing. At first I thought I would hate it and I had genuine worry about being successful doing it.  It took some adjustments and still requires them from time to time. Now I'm feral and only attend meetings monthly and even that feels like A LOT.  

And now in the time it's taken me to finish this, I've lost the plot.  I think it was about favorite accommodations when you work from home.  Let's go with that.  Oh, wait, no, I started a different post and forgot. This is the thing:

So if I were to ever be a creator with a Work With Me page, it would feature constant music changing, Lucy either barking or laying down and sighing heavily, me popping up and down because "Oh, the laundry"  "Is that the Shamazon delivery?"  "I'm hungry/thirsty/snacky" with light touch typing and a silent mouse, because I'm not a psychopath.   Also, lots of frowning and heavy sighing at my monitors.  And probably cursey muttering.