Work From Home; The Struggle of 2020

Over the past few weeks, I've seen numerous people reaching out for mental support. Sometimes directly, often hidden under a question asking about how to maintain work/life balance when working from home with young children.

I've been working home for over 6 years now. Although, I used to work from the office for 1 or 2 days a week. So, I did meet my coworkers on regular basis.

But 2020 changed things. I've been stuck at home since March. I have a 3-year-old and a 7-month-old that has been born in the mid of this epidemic. And it's exhausting! Not the little one. Just..., all of it.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I felt a huge productivity boost. Even though it was only 2 days, the time I stopped spending on commuting was now spent on something productive.

As we can't spend the weekends as we would before I now spend it on side projects. Sure, we still have some family time. But I'm not the kind of person that sits still on the couch. And I'm not the kind that can get lost in books either. So, while the others are waking up, I take my notebook and code. Coding used to place me in a zone where everyday problems don't exist.

This worked great in the first half of this year. I've given leaflet-geosearch a long due update, published some new libraries like where-broke, jest-partial, unimported, and graphql-args. I've also launched few bigger projects, such as testing-playground.com, issupported.com and updrafts.app. All besides my day job. As I already mentioned, I got quite productive.

But things changed. Months passed by and the situation outside went from bad to worse. Covid isn't gone. World leaders don't agree with science. A vaccine isn't near. There is no expectation for improvement, or even a known date when the applied regulations will end. This "second wave" has hit me hard.

My productivity has slumped. I've been unable to do anything productive lately. I can't get in my code. I see my editor. I see the letters on my screen. But my mind is unable to connect the dots and draw the bigger picture.

The thing I'm trying to say is; if you hate working from home. Feeling unproductive. Don't know how to balance work/life. Feel burned out. Please know: you're not alone :heart:.

It's not (just) working from home. It's all of it. It's 2020.