Day 628

A team member said the other day that we know how long we’d been in lockdown because my blog posts have a running tally. Well they did during the first lockdown in 2020 and the last time I totalled it was 19 August when it was 510 days since the start of the first lockdown. If you’re interested it’s 628 days today. And if you live to the average age of a Kiwi that’s over two percent of your life since we started this lockdown and restriction journey. So what?

Well whatever happens, I’m well past the waiting for life to return to how it was – there is no return – this is it. Get on with it. Which means getting vaccinated, including a booster soon, embracing how we work, which for the knowledge worker, will have some level of flexibility. A combination of in the office, working at home, working away from home (if you’re fortunate enough to have other options), and working when it suits. And it means not bothering if you can’t do one or the other, just working how you can, or as the case may be, how you have to.

Going back to the office for the last week felt like light relief – I counted only six people on my “home floor” of level 29 on Monday – so it was very light. In fairness Monday was not of my business unit’s “designated days” as was prescribed at the commencement of the week – soon gone with new government rules – but it quickly swelled by Thursday to feel a bit more challenging to find a space. There was lots of “isn’t it great to be back in the office” and “so pleased to be out of the house“. I’m not sure what to make of this yet – will this be the refrain on 17 January when we start back after the holidays?!

There’s a switch taking place – people are tired from lockdown work – I’m tired from staring at the screen too much, but I don’t think we will, or will even want to, go back to “9-5” in the office five days a week. Of course the switch started long before Covid-19, but it’s accelerated beyond all the change plans, carefully thought through, could have anticipated. When I look back at our flexible working plans before “Day 1”, an educated guess might be that it would have been at least 2025 before we got to where we are now.

So, the future may have arrived. For once! All my life I’ve looked forward to the future and when it’s arrived, most of the time it was so gradual I never noticed it. Even the internet seemed cautious, transitional, and obvious, when it arrived. And we’re still waiting on flying cars (they were supposed to be here long ago!), and robots are generally confined to places where we don’t see them (I hope).

On reflection, my counting the days of the lockdown was partly to tick off the days before we got out of it. “It” turned out to be the switch to flexibility we had been seeking. Although it was for reasons we wouldn’t wish for, we can look at the day numbers now and say with some degree of confidence that it’s day 628 since the future of flexible working arrived for certain.

Stephen

p.s EVs and space tourism are here too – my paternal grandmother was born this day in 1902, in Lilydale, Tasmania. I wonder what she would make of all of this – having lived through the Spanish Flu and two world wars? I reckon she’d take it in her stride with a chuckle and be grateful at least something was happening! And she’d be up for an EV and a trip to space for certain. She loved an adventure.