Counting our Blessings: #5 Working from Home
Time to read: 2 minutes
‘Tis the season to count our blessings, and Sam has counted five of them. In her last four posts, she gave thanks for being virtual from the start. She also expressed gratitude for being entirely focused on B2B, with a distinct aversion to organising events and being part of a team that understands that life sometimes comes first. Here’s her final reason to be grateful: Working from home.
The ‘Un-des res’
Hearing on the radio daily the challenges that so many people face trying to work from home has been hard. People working in homes that were not set up for it alongside those who were not supposed to be there during working hours, i.e., the family. I am so grateful that I have never succumbed to the mantra of location, location, location.
People look slightly sorry when I confess to where I live. It’s in a deeply unfashionable part of London. On the wrong side of the North Circular. In a distinctly average suburban semi.
Not for us warehouse living or the joys of open plan. Indeed, not one wall has ever been knocked through. In the immediate environs, there are no funky shops, no gastro pubs or organic anything. However, we’re spoilt for choice with fried chicken shops.
But for that rather ego-wounding trade-off, what we do have is what this year became the new must-have: SPACE.
Space enough to have a large and comfortable office with a door I can open when I go to work and shut behind me when I finish. And it has lovely old French windows that open up to a garden. It has a long, unwieldy, shady tangle of a garden that I’m never entirely on top of, but it kept me sane and tan just trying. We even have a huge lake at the bottom of the road – no, really! It was one of London’s best-kept secrets. But not so much now.
And if you do have to share a home office with anyone, at least I get to share mine with Dill and Basil.
With Elli happily locked down at St Andrews for the autumn, I was ever grateful to have the companionship of Dill, the little labrador. Also, a new recruit, five-month-old Basil, a bulldog/poodle or boodle, and a total charmer. Like a little furry Hugh Grant. Together, they get me out of the house every day, and watching them play is better than any water cooler moment I can ever recall.
I could go on, but I’ll stop at five. To share the love and celebrate our good fortune, we’re donating a day’s fee to the team’s chosen charities: The Trussell Trust, providers of food banks across the UK; Shelter, supporting the homeless; and Street Paws, looking after the animals of the homeless.
