{"id":6572,"date":"2016-07-14T01:22:01","date_gmt":"2016-07-13T19:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=6572"},"modified":"2016-07-14T01:22:01","modified_gmt":"2016-07-13T19:52:01","slug":"work-from-home-burnout-is-real-but-ill-take-that-any-day-over-pandemic-paranoia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=6572","title":{"rendered":"Work-from-Home Burnout is Real But I\u2019ll Take That Any Day Over Pandemic Paranoia"},"content":{"rendered":"\nI<\/span>t\u2019s 9 am. My balcony is filled with dried laundry from two days ago, yet to be picked up and folded. No one bothers to pick it up unless absolutely necessary \u2013 besides, ironing clothes is a thing of the past. It\u2019s been two months since the lockdown <\/a>started.\n\nAs I sip my morning tea, I look at a crow perched atop a wire. The crow looks at me. My cat rubs his fur against my knees and snuggles up, but then the crow distracts him too. He climbs the balcony railing, aiming a jump, hoping to grab the crow. He is a crafty cat, ambitious, yet blissfully unaware of the fall from the balcony. I do a balancing act, grabbing the cat, putting a halt to his suicidal tendencies, and keeping my steaming tea from spilling over.\n\nThis little scene is repeated every morning, until the comforting lull of work distracts me. After 9 am, the hour is marked by the afternoon, when I make lunch. Then, it\u2019s directly 7 pm. There\u2019s no in between, no real distractions<\/a>, nothing to indicate when morning turns into noon turns into night. I wish there were more distractions in my life than the cat<\/a>.\n\nThere\u2019s a certainty to my morning routine \u2013 I know that it will happen anyway, and if I don\u2019t make active efforts to change it, it won\u2019t budge. Because most of my day later on is unpredictable. And I find some comfort in that unpredictability because I have never done just one thing at a time.\n\n

There are no real distractions, nothing to indicate when morning turns into noon turns into night.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nI\u2019d always imagined that once I had ample time on hand, I\u2019d soar high, my creative juices would flow non-stop. And the non-availability of that time was the only hurdle to achieving greater things in life. For starters, I thought I\u2019d devour more than half of my looming bookshelf<\/a>. I still have a battered old copy of Aldous Huxley\u2019s Brave New World <\/em>sitting beside me on my bed, yet unopened. This lockdown is the perfect time to read that classic, a slim volume I\u2019d probably complete in three long sittings. But the highly insanely utopic setting, bordering on dystopia, forces me to think about the times we\u2019re actually living in. So I close the book and try reading Gilead<\/em>, but my eyes glaze over the pages soon.\n\nAnd so, I seek refuge in work. To not think of all the other things I am not doing. To not think of the times we\u2019re living in.\n\nWhile many people have dedicated this lockdown<\/a> to finding new skills everyday, I worship at the altar of Gmail and make a daily sacrifice to Google Hangout. And frankly, I don\u2019t mind. Work is an escape, because the looming spectre of the pandemic <\/a>leaves me breathless. Because if I am not thinking about work, then I am thinking whether I have adequately sanitised every packet of dal and spices, every utensil, every vegetable in my household. Whether my roommate is covering his face with his elbows while sneezing, and how often I should wash my face-mask. I\u2019d take work anxiety <\/a>any day over the anticipation of a fever, or a dry cough.\n\nBefore lunch there\u2019s almost always a client call, always a last-minute change in brief, always a script narration where four people are speaking at the same time, at least one is laughing, and there\u2019s a mynah chirping in someone\u2019s background.\u00a0 But perhaps four years of engineering college<\/a> with the last-minute race to the lecture halls, and five years of subsequent corporate chaos has made me immune to any uncertainty that work throws at me. At this point, I almost revel in it.\n\nIn the afternoon my cat comes and snuggles beside me. Soon he gets distracted and finds something else to snuggle against, like an airbag inside my cupboard. I reach over to give him a pet on his head but my phone vibrates with an update from a news app. The news is always a variation of \u201cnew Covid cases emerging in hotspots<\/a>\u201d, \u201cWays to know if a cough is a Covid cough\u201d, and \u201clack of beds leave patients scrambling for options\u201d. I open click on the clickbait headline, hoping to almighty God that the actual contents of the news aren\u2019t that alarming. But if I had a grain of sand for all the things I have hoped for, I\u2019d remodel Juhu Beach. It\u2019s heartbreaking, all this hopelessness around.\n\n

I seek refuge in work. To not think of all the other things I am not doing and the times we\u2019re living in.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nI finish reading and go back to work. A script needs my urgent attention. But attention is also in short supply, and so I look for something else\u2026 a prior deliverable I might have missed, a script I haven\u2019t read, client calls to hop on to. I eventually find something. I find my fly, my crow, my insect, much like my cat does. Work is saving me from going bonkers, because at least the chaos of work follows a discipline. Grief, heartbreak, the pandemic \u2013 these things aren\u2019t disciplined. When life doesn\u2019t give you enough wins, you take work wins and cherish them. At first, work was a distraction. Now, it\u2019s a saviour. When there is so much to get done, facing the pandemic seems like a cakewalk.\n\nI often think it\u2019s not healthy, marinating in this chaos. There\u2019s a real, sharp sword named \u201cBurnout\u201d hanging near my neck. All my efforts go into keeping that at bay, and parrying with a sword of my own \u2014 dogged persistence. Perhaps, sometime in the future, I\u2019ll find a healthier alternative. But for now, I make this compromise, because I have to keep moving. The pandemic is everyone\u2019s worst nightmare come to life, and I feel the only way out is through. And so, I keep doing things to keep me afloat.\n\nIt\u2019s night again. I have to prepare dinner. The chaos of work has subsided, for now, and a new, domestic kind of chaos presents itself. There are no onions and no tomatoes. My cat has found a door to some different cat universe beneath my washing machine. He is distracted. I am distracted by the rush to come up with a quick dinner which would satiate the appetite of four people. We have some yogurt and some besan. Kadhi chawal will be perfect.\n\nI go to work again. And I know I will win.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am grateful for the escape provided by work. It is saving me from going bonkers, because at least the chaos of work follows a discipline. Grief, heartbreak, the pandemic \u2013 these things aren\u2019t disciplined. I\u2019d take work anxiety any day over the anticipation of a dry cough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":293,"featured_media":6573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[10435,10388,10633,4770,10634,10635],"class_list":["post-6572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pov","tag-lockdown","tag-pandemic","tag-routine-during-lockown","tag-work","tag-work-chaos","tag-workaholic"],"yoast_head":"\nWork-from-Home Burnout is Real But I\u2019ll Take That Any Day Over Pandemic Paranoia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I am grateful for the escape provided by work. 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