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Yesterday’s post was partly about insidious uses of zoning. I realized today that I’ve been zoning within my own house.
After a few months of working at home, my mind has apparently accepted the dining room as the office. When I’m doing work in the dining room, I’m focused. But if I try to do work in the kitchen, I feel like work is invading my space. Meanwhile, I can blog at the kitchen table, but not in the dining room.
Rationally, that’s all silly, but it seems to work. Once the cues are in place, all is well. And the commute is really short.
The struggle now is when TW and I are both there and one of us has a Zoom conference. We can’t sit across from each other on Zoom calls at the same time, so one of us has to move. I still haven’t found or developed a really good spot other than that.
I’m acutely aware of how lucky we are. We have a house with enough space that it doesn’t feel like a prison; I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for couples with kids in small NYC apartments. We both still have our jobs. The Wi-Fi is good. Change any of those, and this would be much harder.
Still, I know the isolation is wearing. At one point this week, watching a reporter walk the streets of Minneapolis at dusk, I caught myself sighing and saying, “I miss cities.” That wasn’t the point of the report -- the street scene wasn’t exactly bucolic -- but just seeing people walking along busy streets at dusk was enough to make me pine. There’s something about urban hiking that’s good for the soul.
Self-awareness can be embarrassing sometimes.
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If that’s not bad enough, I’m the guest on a couple of episodes of the My Education podcast this week. The first episode is mostly autobiographical, with the second focusing more on higher ed. (I like the second one a lot better than the first.) Feel free to check them out. Listeners of a certain age are invited to compare my pauses to Bob Newhart’s. Even I have to concede the resemblance.
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The Girl has been introducing me to “aesthetics” on TikTok. They’re sort of a cross between mood boards and visual puns. The idea is that people post quick visual summaries of each aesthetic, and people align with the ones that resonate with them. Her favorite is “light academia,” which she describes as a cross between “dark academia” and “CottageCore.”
I’ll admit a mix of pride and dread in seeing that she picked up the academic gene. This week she had to write an essay to apply for section leader of the trumpet section of the marching band next year. (She was already section leader this year, so I like her chances.) Last year, the band teacher pronounced her essay the best he had ever seen. This year’s is better. She has the verbal skills of an educated adult but the energy and worldview of a 10th grader; the combination is a hoot.
I’m proud of her, of course, and I get a kick out of watching her mind work. But I’m also worried. Some of that is just standard-issue parental worry, but some of it comes from seeing the trends in academia. She’s ideally suited for an industry that isn’t looking terribly sustainable. That’s … not great.
Still, she’s adaptable. Part of her essay was about realizing, after we moved to New Jersey from Massachusetts, that change was going to be part of her life. As she put it, “change walked into my living room, plopped itself down on the couch, poured itself a glass of champagne, and made itself comfortable.”
I couldn’t have said it better.
