Paul Bojarski: I miss the alone

While most of the world is struggling with the issues that come from staying home from work — the loneliness, the lack of interaction with co-workers, the quiet — I am struggling with something else: I miss being alone.

I miss the alone that comes with working from my home office or, as they call it in the year of covid-19, WFH (working from home). I’ve had the opportunity to WFH for the past 18 years, in good weather and bad, in sickness and in health. Pretty much every day that I was not in a plane or car traveling for work, you could find me in my home office. I was steadfast and locked into my solitary routines: Wake up, see my wife and son off to work, then shower, dress, make coffee, move into my home office, log in to my PC, fire up my mobile phone, get to work.

Oh, the work that was accomplished! Presentations, contracts, budgets, Zoom meetings and conference calls, real-time email communications, interoffice chats and “hang-outs.” All from the comfort of my home office, watching out the windows as the day went by, alone.

It’s hard for someone who’s not used to WFH to understand the joy of solitude, the contemplation that comes with silence and the work that can be accomplished in a state of isolation. I’m reminded of how difficult this understanding is thanks to the coronavirus and its ugly offspring covid-19.

With the worldwide spread of the deadly virus, all of our lives have morphed into something like a Stephen King-like postapocalyptic novel. And nowhere is that more evident than in my home or, more specifically, my home office.

The word came down last month that everyone needs to practice “social distancing”: don’t gather in large groups, stay out of restaurants and, worst of all, everyone who can should telecommute or work from home. Everyone! Egads! My daily routines, my solitude, my quiet, my alone, gone.

There were rare occasions when my wife would WFH. On those days I could tolerate her being in my space, sharing my solitude, my silence — although I will admit annoyance at her not having a routine or for staying in her pajamas till 4 p.m.! But now I must share my space every day for the foreseeable future with not only my wife, but also my adult son, who is under the same mandate to WFH.

Now my days are filled with chaos. My office has been relocated to the dining room table as my wife has claimed squatter’s rights to my “home office” proper. And my son has set up residence in the basement, where he runs his day-to-day business.

The challenges? Consider three separate conference calls on totally unrelated topics going on simultaneously. And now I have to share the Wi-Fi! Can you imagine three professionals taxing the home’s broadband capabilities when I had it all those glorious years to myself? The indignity of it all!

Now don’t get me wrong. I love my family and like nothing more than to spend time with them, but on reasonable terms — Monday through Friday every morning, and every evening after work and all weekend. That’s reasonable, right? Now we work in such close proximity and are around one another so much that nerves get frayed and tolerance levels drop; we’ve even so much that we’ve instituted a “safe word” to be used when things go too far.

Before last week, when I worked from home and I missed my wife and son, I would call or text them just to see how their days were going. That was enough and met the needs of this solitary man.

But now I really understand what it is to miss something. And oh, what I miss the most — the silence, the solitude, the alone …

Paul Bojarski works from his Franklin Park home.