telework – Just a Maryland Girl

The pandemic and working from home has led to quite a revolution in the workforce. People are realizing that life as we had been living it before the pandemic is not where it’s at. Priorities have changed and this has led to people being fed up. People are feeling empowered to make changes. People are realizing their worth, realizing what they want, and realizing that employment as we’ve known it is for the birds. And though I didn’t get it at first, I NOW GET IT!

Personally, I have had some realizations about work and life during this pandemic, and I cannot see going back to life as I knew it before this all happened. I feel like my life’s priorities do not line up with working the way I did before the pandemic. And I feel like I just cannot see going back to the way things were.

People are realizing their worth, realizing what they want, and realizing that employment as we’ve known it is for the birds. And though I didn’t get it at first, I NOW GET IT!

I’m sure that along with the rest of the world, after two years of remote working, I now realize that going to an office every single day is for the birds. Don’t get me wrong, I know for some occupations, it’s required. I wouldn’t expect my dentist to virtually clean my teeth, no more than I’d expect my mechanic to virtually change my oil. I know for a lot of people, there was no such thing as working from home.

But for the millions of office workers and paper pushers like myself, working from home is what we did during the pandemic. Once upon a time, working 100% remotely once seemed like an impossibility–like…we really felt like there’s no way in earth we could fully operate without stepping foot into an office space.

What about our files and our print-outs and faxes and mail???

But obviously, we did it. And we did it darn well. And while doing it, we discovered a lot of things about what’s important in life and what’s not. Spending more time at home helping kids with school work easily outweighs devoting that same time to being in a car commuting. We’ve discovered hobbies and recipes, we’ve enhanced relationships and we’ve explored and vacationed more than normal–things that were at the very least made more difficult when we had a requirement to be physically present in an office.

I realize that I have it good when it comes to work. I get paid very well, I have a lot of flexibility, before the pandemic, I did work three days from home, and when it comes to work-related stress, that really is quite low. So, I have no plans to resign.

HOWEVER…there are some things I also have no interest in doing again. Ever. And I hope I can align my life up to these preferences in the near future.

So now that the return-to-work announcement seems imminent, I’m realizing that there are some things I haven’t missed and that I have no interest in returning to.

Spending 20 hours of my work week in a car fussing about my commute and crazy @ss drivers
Fussing over work outfits
Carrying around flat shoe and a work shoe (and a gym shoe if I plan to work out during lunch)
Mentally allocating hours and hours preparing for work and the associated logistics of getting to the office
Living my life around when traffic starts and ends
Spending money on just getting to, and being in, the office. (Gas, car wear and tear, meals out, coffee on the go, etc.)
Missing out on things because I can’t get there in time if I’m coming from work
Feeling like a race starts the moment I hit the door in the evenings (because things I’ve done during the workday during the pandemic, I’m unable to do if I’m in the office…such as running an errand that takes 10 minutes from your home but that’s not possible to do in a reasonable timeframe from the office, marinating chicken, doing laundry, prepping meals, going to a fitness class by my home that I can’t make it to in time from the office)
Attending meetings in person that could be an email, a phone call, Teams/Skype message, or a virtual meeting
Constantly being in a state of meal planning because I have to take lunch and breakfast to the office and then have an easy-to-make meal at home for dinner because I have to go to bed in two hours.
Going to bed two hours after I get home
Living off of convenient meals because there’s no time to cook and prep
Waking up before 8am. I literally cannot believe that I woke up at 6am and often didn’t start working until 9. THREE HOURS wasted every single day.
Dealing with work drama. So much of that disappears when you don’t have to deal with in-person foolishness. I don’t see you, you don’t see me, and at the end of the day, I sign off and live my life.
Not focusing on my side hustle and other interests because all of my free time and mental space is devoted to work things.
Spending money on clothing just to go to the office
Shoveling snow or dealing with inclement weather just to get to or from the office.
Awkward pot lucks
Paying for dry cleaning
The ability to zone out in the middle of the day which is not possible in the office because you always have to be “on”

This is just my starter list. There are so many more things I have no interest in dealing with once we are required to return to work. What have you not missed since being on full-time remote work? Anything on my list? What are your thoughts on the Great Resignation?

*The North Carolina Modern Farmhouse Bungalow*

I feel like I should have made this post a couple months ago, but…better late than never, right? You may have seen me mention Airbnb life in a few of my IG and blog posts, so here’s why.

“Let’s find some beautiful places and get lost together”

Towards the end of last year, as my apartment lease was coming to an end, I had a decision to make. I had to decide whether to renew my lease or find somewhere else to live. I really didn’t care for the complex I was living in, and finding a new place to rent was proving to be harder than I imagined. Because of COVID and its restrictions on landlords, rental home inventory in my area was pretty locked up. I didn’t want to move into another apartment, (I was moving from a bad experience with a neighbor and just did not want to be connected to another person). I wasn’t quite prepared to buy another property (I already have a condo that I rent out and am not looking to buy anything else right now), and my rental options were extremely limited for the Southern Maryland region. As time was winding down on my lease, the whole search was absolutely stressing me out.

In addition, we were around month 9 of this crazy pandemic, we were knee deep in an unreal election cycle, civil unrest was on an uptick, and I felt like I just needed an escape of some sort. Travel was essentially restricted so a vacation wasn’t really an option, nor was it a long-term solution.

One day, almost as a joke, I said “I should just pack up my stuff and Airbnb it until I’m over it.”

It seemed like a ridiculous idea…until it wasn’t. What does that even mean?? Airbnb it? What are you even talking about?? Airbnb isn’t even a verb!

After a few conversations with my boyfriend, and a lot of hypothetical what-ifs, we decided what the hell! We were both teleworking for the indefinite future, all we needed was an internet connection, and that connection did not HAVE to be in Southern Maryland.

*I swear I did not think my stuff would fit!*

We came up with a list of criteria for a rental home, we entered said set of criteria, and we searched until we were numb. We whittled down our list and tuned in on one home that piqued our interest. We had probably looked at that Airbnb listing a million times before we made our decision. We decided to go for it, and eventually we made our first monthly reservation. We didn’t really know what to expect. Could we live in a rental home for an entire month?? What if we hated it on day 1 and were stuck?? We have no place else to go!

The pictures looked adorable but, in this day of filters and angles, anything can be made to look amazing.

Once the reservation was made, it was time to execute our plan. For the last couple months of 2020, we debated logistics, we purged, stored, and packed all our possessions. We finished out our lease, and by January 1^st, we were in our first Airbnb—an adorable modern bungalow right outside of Raleigh, NC.

*North Carolina Rest Stop on the way to our first Airbnb*

When move day arrived, we pulled into the driveway well after dark. We were exhausted from cleaning out the apartment, packing up the car, visiting relatives dropping off random this and thats, doing our last-minute Maryland items, and then driving the four hours to North Carolina. We fumbled through the self-check-in, we unpacked the car, (dropping a bottle of red wine all over the driveway…sigh…), showered and went to bed. We barely found our pj’s and toothbrushes before we called it a night. But the next morning when we woke up, explored our new (temporary) home, and realized how much we loved the idea of what we’d done.

The home was exactly as the pictures portrayed. YAY! The décor was adorable, the modern furnishings were so chic, and the personal touches from the host were perfect. It was peaceful. The scenery was so calming. We felt relaxed and it was wonderful.

Anyone who has taken a staycation can probably relate. It doesn’t matter if you go down the street or to another country, there is just something therapeutic about being out of your home, your day-to-day routine, your normal space, and in a new environment. And after nine months of quarantine, and a year of an unpleasant neighbor, new scenery was so refreshing. Even if all we did was sit inside this home and work, cook, eat, and do normal every day things, we felt like a new peaceful space, and slightly warmer weather, would be just what the doctor ordered.

While it feels super weird to have no fixed address, and to not know where I will be living two months from now, somehow my nerves are less frazzled than they were living next to a neighbor that drove me insane, while constantly watching news that regurgitated the COVID/election/racial injustice cycle.

I’m not entirely sure how long I’ll be an Airbnb vagabond, but I’d love to take you all on this little journey with me. I can’t promise it will be super exciting, but I will share some homes, experiences, and lessons that I learn along the way. I’m three months and three homes into this experience, and it’s been a pretty interesting lifestyle thus far.

Have you ever thought of doing anything like this? If so, what would be your approach? What would you want to do? Where would you want to go?

Have questions, hit me up!

Tag: telework

My Thoughts on The Great Resignation

My So Called Airbnb Life