groundhog day

So, it has been a few days since I’ve posted one of my daily entries. A couple of you reached out and asked how I am and thank you for that. Seriously. Thank you. I’m OK. I’m just exhausted. And it isn’t the good kind of fatigue that comes after a great workout or a day of physical labor. This is the existential malaise of now. My body is healthy in quarantine, but my mind is sick and tired.

I don’t think I need to rehash the reasons we all share, right? The Dow has dropped 30-plus per cent since this all started. Millions are rushing to file unemployment claims. There are more than half a million cases of this virus in the USA. In the past month, New York City has seen double the number of deaths compared to a normal 31 day period. Yesterday, California Governor Gavin Newsom extended California’s lockdown to mid-May. In some counties, they’re debating $1,000 fines for people who are out without masks.

But life goes on. And I have a first-world problem right now that has less to do with this global crisis and more to do with working from home, and that’s meetings. While I want to use this time to develop some pivot plans, get organized, and also to gain inspiration from dreaming up ideas for what we can do when all of this is over, I instead find myself in back-to-back-to-back meetings talking about the same things over and over and over.... What day is it again? Ah right. It’s Groundhog Day.

I accepted a full-time gig in January of this year – my first real job in more than a decade with an office and benefits and vacation days. As a career freelancer, I have gone through cycles of being really happy as my own boss alternating with feeling constrained by the limits of my own four walls. Those moments of doubt usually come around the same time that I’m looking at rinsing and repeating a project plan for the umpteenth time and I find myself craving a new challenge and the inspiration that comes from bouncing ideas between members of a team.

After being approached about an opening at the company early last year, I spent six months hemming and hawing before deciding that the time was right to go back to a job, and that this job was the one. I made my way through the application and interview process, and accepted the new role, starting in January.

I cannot believe my good fortune to be employed at this moment in history. Especially as I hear from friends at small businesses facing layoffs and freelancers in my ambit working in the events and film businesses who are struggling to pay the bills. I am extremely grateful that a steady income shows up in my bank account every two weeks. Sure, I work in a department that is a cost-center and we’re already seeing budget cuts, but today I have a job and that’s as certain as anything gets right now.

So I recognize that I’m in a position of privilege and that I’m complaining about it. So, if you’ve lost your job or you’re underemployed right now, I am so sorry and I know things will turn around for you really soon. But, if you’re one of the lucky ones like me, I’m acknowledging that this new normal is an adjustment. I don’t know how parents are managing at all. Especially single parents, with the challenges of home schooling and limited Internet and computer resources, and keeping locked up kids entertained throughout the work day. Because I’m over here dealing with motivational death by a thousand conference calls and I’m struggling hard.

The company is fond of meetings. I discovered this in my first few days there (just before all of this) and, under normal circumstances, I would expect four or five hours of my new job’s workday to be consumed by getting into a room with a group of people to share information. As a freelancer accustomed to doing work more than talking about it, I have found this astonishing. With only a couple of hours left in the work day after all the meetings, when do people actually do things?

It reminds me of being in college where I realized that the 60 or 90 minutes of a scheduled lecture were typically spent reviewing readings and talking about them. And when I did the homework like I was supposed to – you know, ahead of time – then these sessions rarely delivered any new insights at all. Whatever we blathered on about in class was probably something I’d either reviewed in study hall, or would review when the time came to write a paper or prepare for the exam.

So, for the sake of efficiency, I just didn’t go. Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t partying and sleeping it off (usually). I got solid grades while avoiding classes as much as possible to free up time for other things I actually wanted to do and where I could learn by doing. My days were full and productive as I wrote and edited for the student newspaper, hosted a couple of shows on college radio, and operated a side-gig promoting raves and indie rockers to help fund my sky-high east coast winter heating bills.  

Now, decades later, I realize that I work with a whole bunch of people who eagerly showed up to sit in the front row of those lectures I skipped so that they could share their thoughts with the room -- whether they had done the reading or not.

The situation is made much worse now that company leaders have decided to shoehorn department wide check-ins and information sessions into our already packed conference call days. I acknowledge first that this is well intentioned: people panic in an information vacuum and it’s good for most workers to have touch points with the company. Second, I also recognize that my particular situation may be worse than some others because I have a cross-functional role and I’m middle-management, so I’m pulled in every direction. But even with all that in mind, it’s a maddening amount of talking when I would really prefer to be doing something, anything else.

And I haven’t figured out how to skip these meetings because it would appear that nobody shares the readings ahead of time. Thought starter: if there are more than, say, 10 people who need an update, then maybe an hour-long call to review a PowerPoint deck might not be the most efficient information transfer mechanism? Maybe an e-mail that can be read and processed in under 10 minutes would suffice?

Le sigh.

For better or for worse, my career is my passion and I have always derived a great deal of satisfaction from my work. So, if I’m watching the clock most days instead of being excited most days, then I have a real problem getting out of bed in the morning. And mornings are when I write. And so I haven’t been writing. And here we are.

Even as our days in lockdown are stretching endlessly long, life seems really short right now. So if you’re wondering what I’m up to? I might be a little frustrated, but I’m fine. Just in a meeting.