The World Moved to My Home
Reblog from TranslateCluj
I was going to write a post about working from home since, you know, this is what we, freelancers, do best. But there are plenty of articles out there discussing this topic, so I changed my mind and this blog post is about doing EVERYTHING from home.
If I wanted to be philosophical I would say that these past three or four months have been a journey inward. But I’ll be shallow and I’ll say that it seems like the entire world moved to my 88 square meter (that’s 947 square feet) apartment. My home has suddenly turned into an impromptu kindergarten, double office (mine and my wife’s), restaurant, supermarket, shopping mall, cinema, workshop, showroom, meeting/chatting venue… and I could go on. But that’s not all. The funniest part is that all of these formed some sort of a weird continuum. There is no separation between my daughter’s classroom and the family’s living room… I mean, cinema, or between the virtual conference room and my personal office. My home feels like a big pile of pretty much everything despite it being quite tidy, actually.
In the past, after a hard day of work I would often reward myself with a walk out to the city centre, a drive to the supermarket or mall or a dinner out. But my urge to go out was counterbalanced by my wife’s urge to stay in because, you know, every normal person wants to wind down at home after a hard day at the office, not in a busy restaurant, park, supermarket or whatever. But nowadays, if I need new furniture, it’s not like I could visit the closest showroom. No, sir. If I need furniture, I travel (virtually) to Germany, find my favorite shelves and order them from there! Because not only do they ship to Romania, but they ship for free! When I told you that the entire world had moved to my apartment, I wasn’t kidding. And online shopping has become a new (guilty) pleasure! I don’t even know whether I can go back to the classic shopping experience (boooring!).
I’m looking back at a time when the online environment was perceived as not necessarily a good place, when everybody blamed kids for keeping their eyes glued to their phone screens instead of socializing with real people. Who would have thought that the narrative would change 180 degrees? Who could have predicted that health experts, authorities and influencers would repeatedly tell you to keep distance from each other and move all our lives online. Pretty strange, isn’t it?
