One month of quarantine/self isolation

It is now official. I have been working from home for one month. Friday the 13th was my first day away from the office, a rather auspicious day to kick things off.

The first week was a little strange, but now, after these four weeks of getting set up and settled in, it feels like the norm. I have my work machine set up at home, with the same monitor config I had before. That's because this is the machine I had at work.

I've had the ability to work from home for several years. And on occasion, due to weather or appointment, I have benefited from it. But, that has been for one day and at most I might miss a meeting. If there was a lot of activity, I would simply go back into the office.

Now that I've been at home, and working with teammates over Slack, Email, and Zoom, as well as working on my own automation projects, I quite like this change.

Make no mistake, I don't like the reasons for this situation, but I am extremely grateful, and thankful, that we are both capable and allowed to work from home and shield ourselves.

I've settled in to this new working environment and like it quite a bit. I love not being stuck in traffic for the commute to work and back.

I love the extra time I have at the end of the day for exercise. I walk across the room and start to ride my bike. I have time to exercise and more time at night for myself.

I'm also not saddened by the money I am saving by not using gas and not eating out. Not quite how I wanted to save money on groceries, but that is happening as well.

At this point, I'm saving money, I have an extra 2 hours a day by not driving into work, I can work on the same projects and in the same way as I did when in the office, I have plenty of technology to keep in touch with my team, and I have a dedicated workspace with dedicated machines to get my work done. In essence I feel I am working the same at home as I did when in the office.

I was actually thinking, if my company asked my opinion on whether or not I would like to keep working from home, I would have to say yes. I have gained far more than I have lost.