Working from Home

I'm working from home.  I’ve worked from home before for a day or two, usually when I wasn’t feeling quite well enough to inflict myself on other humans or when the weather was really bad. But for the last week+ I have had to work from home because the Governor said people like me - over 65 with asthma/COPD and other illnesses - need to stay at home in isolation.  I’ve never worked from home for this long before.  It’s a very different experience.

When I’m working at home for a day or so, I can wear sweats or pjs and my fuzzy cat-icorn slippers.  But under the current circumstances, I realized pretty much right away that I couldn’t focus the way I need to if I treat this as a one or two day work at home situation.  So I follow my usual routine and dress each morning as if I were going in to the church office, go to my “office” between 8 and 9 am, get up from my desk when my watch tells me it’s time to stand. and change into my at-home clothes when I get “home” at the end of the day.  

The office section of my den at the Parsonage wasn’t really set up for work-work.  It was a pretty casual area used mostly for personal writing, letters, reading and such.  So I had to do some rearranging to make it a more effective work space.  I needed space for commentaries and study bibles that usually live in another room.  One main difference is that in the church office I eat at my desk, while at home I eat at the kitchen table.  Plus, cats. When I work from home I have to accept that the Cats will “help” me work.

I am working harder. It’s much more difficult to control my hours when my office is also the place I spend my free time.  My friends and colleagues have been surprised to discover that NOT holding worship in the sanctuary is much more work than our usual Sunday worship.  We’ve had to learn how to do online worship on the fly.  We’ve had to figure out ways to mobilize and empower the congregation to reach out to each other more than they usually do.  We’ve had to walk a tightrope between getting the work of the church office done (mail and bill paying and newsletters) while keeping our folks and ourselves safe and healthy.  And we’ve had to find ways to comfort our members,  soothing the fears and concerns they rightfully are experiencing even as we experience the same feelings.  

We don’t know how long this will last, this whole working at home thing.  But we do know that we will get through it, because God is with us.