Avatar photoSteven Savage

Working At Home Isn’t Working from Home

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

(This is also part of a Twitter Thread.)

Right now a lot of people are working from home during the COVID crisis. @Neilmwebb noted “You’re not working from home; you are at your home during a crisis trying to work.”

I’d like to expand on this observation. Because people are not just home during a crisis working, there’s a lot more going on we need to consider.

THE CRISIS: Yes, we’re at home during a crisis working, and it’s a big crisis. It’s everywhere, affecting everyone – no one will be unaffected, even if they think they aren’t. This makes everything else more complicated.

NEWCOMERS: A lot of people are working from home completely for the first time. Sure they did a day or three here, but now it’s long term and all the time. Help them out.

FAMILY: Now a lot of us are at home with our spouse, kids, parents, etc. We have to learn to work with or around them – and they with us. We worry about them. We need to support each other.

CARETAKING: Friends and family may need help, aid, and care – and some of us are providing it on top of working. We may have increased caretaking duties. We have to understand others are in this situation.

TECHNOLOGY: We’ve got to learn new technology to work from home, or deal with limits and challenges we haven’t experienced before. We need to share, teach, or work around problems.

SCHEDULES: We’re working from home, we’ve got a crisis, and we’ve got other people’s schedules to deal with. We all have to work out new schedules – we best cooperate to do it.

SAFETY: We’ve now got to wash our hands, practice social distancing, clean surfaces, etc. We have new practices we have to do to prevent infection. That takes up time and mental bandwidth.

TASK CHANGES: We might be cooking more, or we’re ordering online more, or eating out less, and so on. Our usual tasks for daily life are disrupted, and that’s hard to adjust to. We have to be aware of this.

FINANCES: The economy has a hole blown in it, unemployment jumped, and we don’t know what’s going on. We’re worried about the finances of ourselves and others. We’re trying to figure it out – while working at home.

STRESS: Let’s face it, this is a mess. It’s awful. It didn’t have to be that way. We need to back each other up, help each other out, and take breaks.

UNPREDICTABILITY: We don’t know when this ends, which means not only is all of the above happening, we have no idea of when it stops. That brings many pressures onto us.

So we’re not just working from home. We’re not just home during a crisis working. We’re home during a crisis working while having our lives massively disrupted by that crisis. We need to understand this in order to do better, to help others, and to stay mentally and physically healthy.

Steven Savage

My Book Roundup 4/2/2020

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I write a lot and have quite a few books.  So now and then I’m going to post a roundup of them for interested parties!

My sites:

Fiction

I’ve been returning to fiction with a techno-fantasy setting of several planets orbiting a star called Avenoth.  Take a typical fantasy world of magic and gods, and let it evolve into the space age and internet age . . .

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet – Two future teachers of Techno-Magical safety find trying to earn their credentials hunting odd artifacts backfires when you’re hired to put some back . . . on a planet where gods go to die!

The Way With Worlds Series

This is what I do a lot of – writing on worldbuilding!.  You can find all of my books at www.WayWithWorlds.com! 

The core books of the series will help you get going:

  • Way With Worlds Book 1 – Discusses my philosophy of worldbuilding and world creation essentials.
  • Way With Worlds Book 2 – Looks at common subjects of worldbuilding like conflicts in your setting, skills for being a good worldbuilder, and more!

When you need to focus on specifics of worldbuilding, I have an ever-growing series of deep dive minibooks.  Each provides fifty questions with additional exercises and ideas to help you focus on one subject important to you!

The current subjects are:

Creativity

I’m the kind of person that studies how creativity works, and I’ve distilled my findings and advice into some helpful books!

  • The Power Of Creative Paths – Explores my theories of the Five Types of Creativity, how you can find yours, and how to expand your creative skills to use more Types of Creativity.
  • Agile Creativity – I take the Agile Manifesto, a guide to adaptable project development, and show how it can help creatives improve their work – and stay organized without being overwhelmed.
  • The Art of The Brainstorm Book – A quick guide to using a simple notebook to improve brainstorming, reduce the stress around having new ideas, and prioritize your latest inspirations.
  • Chance’s Muse – I take everything I learned at Seventh Sanctum and my love of random tables and charts and detail how randomness can produce inspiration!

Careers

Being a “Professional Geek” is what I do – I turned my interests into a career and have been doing my best to turn that into advice.  The following books are my ways of helping out!

  • Fan To Pro – My “flagship” book on using hobbies and interests in your career – and not always in ways you’d think!
  • Skill Portability – A quick guide to how to move skills from one job to another, or even from hobbies into your job.  Try out my “DARE” system and asses your abilities!
  • Resume Plus – A guide to jazzing up a resume, sometimes to extreme measures.
  • Epic Resume Go! – Make a resume a creative act so it’s both better and more enjoyable to make!
  • Quest For Employment – Where I distill down my job search experiences and ways to take the search further.
  • Cosplay, Costuming, and Careers – An interview-driven book about ways to leverage cosplay interests to help your career!
  • Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers – My second interview-driven book about ways to leverage fanart to help your career!
  • Convention Career Connection – A system for coming up with good career panels for conventions!

Culture

  • Her Eternal Moonlight – My co-author Bonnie and I analyze the impact Sailor Moon had on women’s lives when it first came to North America.  Based on a series of interviews, there’s a lot to analyze here, and surprisingly consistent themes . . .

Dispatches From The Bunker

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I’m hunkered down at home, sheltering in place, like so many of you. At this rate I don’t expect to be going out like normal until the end of May. I’d like to blog more writing stuff, but it’s a bit challenging as my focus is different – getting through this.

The problem with “getting through this” is there is no going back to normal. Normal is gone and good riddance.

Normal led us to this mess. Poor planning, poor awareness, poor practice in too many areas led to suffering. Some countries have done well, but we’re seeing a lot haven’t.

Normal wasn’t as great as it seemed. We’re seeing these events rip the mask off of many flaws in America and other countries – underpaid but critical jobs, understaffed medical care and more.

Normal kept us from seeing better. How many of us realize we can work from home? That we could connect more efficiently? That delivery services could make life much easier (and save time, money, and maybe even pollution).

Normal can’t come back anyway. People will be dead, systems broken, new ideas present, problems revealed. There is no going back anyway.

The question is what we want to do next.

Look, we’ve found who we can rely on and who we can’t. We’ve seen the value of science over bullshit. We’ve seen that people really can rally to help out – and who will exploit the situation. We’re going to have a different world like it or not so damn well shape it.

And that’s overwhelming. It’s hard. It’s painful. We’re stressed, fearful, disrupted, and tired.

But know what? We might as well take what control that we can. We might as well take action when we can. We might as well do what we can. We can take our power ourselves and do something.

So here’s some thoughts for you – on an escalating scale.

  • Take a break. If you’re tired, take a break and rest. Recover your strength – that’s OK.
  • Check in with people regularly. Find out how they’re doing so you can rally.
  • Do something to help people – give a gift, make a meal, give a kind word. Even a minor action changes the world. One of my neighbors has a fruit tree and sets out the fruit for free.
  • Donate to a cause. Look there’s plenty of things out there to help with – your local city or state probably has some organizations to go to. Find one and give money. Its safe and remote.
  • Rally people. Introduce friends to each other. Connect people. Team people up.
  • Connect to a cause. Find a local or national org you can get involved in and DO IT. Start getting active now – and become empowered.

But through all of this? Keep up your creative work. Keep writing and drawing and cosplaying. Because that’s you, and you need to stay yourself.

We’ll get out of this bunker. Let’s make the world better.

Steven Savage