How's Working at Home Working Out?

My state doesn't have an actual shelter-in-place order, but since my governor has been in the forefront of those closing down potential sites of contagion, we're fairly close to sheltering in place. Bars are closed unless they also offer take-out sales (food or containers of beer); restaurants and cafes are take-out and delivery only; theaters are closed; hair salons are closed (just before my appointment, rats!). Etc. A whole lot of us are working from home now.

As a writer and professor, I'm already pretty accustomed to working from home. Even my work for school is largely done from home, because my office at school is in a windowless concrete-block space and I use it for two main things: meeting with students and storing art books.

At home, I normally work on a laptop, although I do still have a desktop machine bought around 2005. The desktop still functions, but I got it shortly before CD drives also read DVDs, shortly before USB 2.0, and shortly before wifi became common. So it's not as practical as it might be. Besides, the laptop allows me to move around in the house as well as (when it was possible) working elsewhere.

Since I live in a part of the country where home ownership is possible for a) people who aren't all that highly paid and/or b) weren't in a position to buy back when housing prices were more affordable throughout the US, I currently live in a house with quite a range of potential work spaces. It's a Victorian in what was once a working-class neighborhood, and in recent decades the attic was turned into living space, so I have two floors plus an unfinished basement where the furnace lives. But what does this translate to in actual work-at-home practice?

Well, let me begin by saying I like my house a lot and enjoy being in it. But it's not ideally designed for working at home even though I can and do work in no fewer than eight different locations in it--I'm currently seated at the foot of the stairs beside a large window, where the bookcase to my left holds fiction A to G and the bookcase to my right holds pocket-size nonfiction and foreign language books. This current spot is good for light and the chair is comfortable, but sometimes the light is too bright, often the air is cold, and it's not a part of the house where rabbits are allowed.

Most of the spaces in my house where I work, like my bedroom, my so-called office, my front room, and my living room, get very little natural light. My upstairs rooms are extremely hot in the summer and one of them (the one with good daytime light) is cold in the winter. Since I teach (normally) in a darkened room and meet with students in a windowless room, I want natural light the rest of the day!

In other words, while my house is a pretty neat place with an interesting variety of spots where I can and do work, under normal circumstances I also do a lot of my work at cafes and libraries. There are two cafes in my own neighborhood, several more within walking distance, and the public library is also in walking distance, while the university library is a good place to work when I'm on campus and not holding class or office hours. Well, at present the libraries are closed and the cafes are take-out only, so while I do try to support them by getting the occasional take-out, I'm working solely at home.

So far, it's okay--and I'm in a much better situation than many, many other people--but I really do miss going to the cafes and libraries!