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I’ve been working from home since COVID-19 came calling like a telemarketer we couldn’t find a way to hang up on. The world changed. Those fortunate enough to have meaningless (non-essential) jobs initially worked from couches, resting our laptops on our chests, poking out terse email replies with otter paws, wrists bent 90 degrees and the company ergonomics department nowhere in sight.
The world was ending anyway. So we’d rise in our pajamas and never take them off, or take video meetings from the waist up, half our bodies “working” while the other half fully committed to the “from home” part of the equation.
Then the pandemic let up. High-profile companies that initially committed to allowing many employees to work from home indefinitely began to backtrack, citing productivity, collaboration, office “culture,” serendipity, etc. Employees are still pushing back.
It took me some time to realize that working from home need not be literal. I could, for example, work from someone else’s home. I could work from hotels. The key was internet access. Meanwhile — say what you will about him — that controversial wizard Elon Musk was moving Starlink satellite internet beyond beta mode into reality. So I bought a camper, equipped it with Wi-Fi and hit the road two winters ago to work from a much smaller home with wheels in warmer climates. I let the snow pile up in Minnesota while I visited national and state parks and forests in North and South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia. There were beaches. The sand piled up in the camper. That first trip I saw perhaps one other Starlink at each campground I visited.
This winter I visited Big Bend National Park, then made my way through forests and parks in New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, Nevada and southern Utah — wherever the weather was nice and I could work outside. This year, it seemed like every fifth camper had a Starlink. The world is changing — fast.
At my job, my boss cares that the work gets done, but not as much about where it gets done. And as long as you’re a diligent employee who also cares about your work, then your work gets done and it gets done well.