One year into lockdown, and I have to admit I don’t miss working from my office all that much. Sure, my colleagues are fun, but they are just as much fun on Zoom, and at least I don’t have to worry about them thinking my shoes don’t match the rest of my outfit. (They have never matched and they never will, but now – who cares, amirite?)
Working from home comes with great benefits, and I don’t even mean the option of turning one’s video off on a bad hair day. Though, that is also fab. I mean, it saves time and energy on the commute, it saves time getting dressed, it saves time by not doing some of the work I’m really not all that excited about. Working from home is OK, is what I’m saying.
One thing I do really miss about life in the office is access to a seemingly limitless supply of stationery. I love stationery. A colorful Post-it note brightens my day, and 15 packets of Post-it notes make me feel very much in control of my planning. Highlighter pens help me prioritize my tasks, by which I mean the task of figuring out why that awful yellow became the default.
Plastic folders really help me organize my paperwork, even though I don’t actually have any paperwork, as I do not have a printer at home. I could not possibly manage my daily schedule without the help of my cork pinboard and the cute little pins in a myriad of colors. (Those pins are at their most helpful when used to pin up a Post-it note that has stopped being sticky, which is on average 10 minutes after you first use it.)
But now, I am in a bind. When I left my office in March 2020 I took with me a considerable stash of office supplies. I mean, I may have slightly overdone it. Considering we were meant to go into lockdown for just 3 weeks, taking 25 legal pads with me may seem like overkill, but what vision huh?!
Here we are, one year later, and I must admit that the way I have been rationing my stash I could stay in lockdown for another 7 years and still have colorful markers to spare. So what do I do now?
Every time I open a new box of paperclips, a little piece of scrap paper somewhere dies. When I finally reach the realization that putting a dried-out pen back in the pen holder is no longer a useful strategy for trying to get it to work and I actually throw it into the trash, I cry a little. We lost so much in 2020. I am just not prepared to lose even one set of heart-shaped sticky notes to this pandemic. I am holding on for dear life. I’ll just keep using the backs of envelopes for my daily planning lists.
