Thank god for the office.

I felt the familiar pending sense of dread this morning as I laid half awake in bed, listening to the faint sounds of a boat horn or a fog horn that was growing increasingly annoying.

It was the sense of “Oh boy. Work from home is getting to me I think. It may be an office day.”

(I’ve been trying to balance WFH and going to the office to minimize exposure since the building where I work re-opened in July.)

Yesterday was what I called a half-Pandemic Blues Day. It wasn’t quite as mentally debilitating as last week’s Pandemic Blues Day, in which I sat in front of my computer with tears streaming down my face at 10 a.m. in the backyard, trying write something for work. That’s when I called it and took a Mental Health Day, which took the form of getting a coffee and a cookie, writing for 3 hours in my journal in the morning and then picking blackberries all afternoon.

Yesterday was a functional Pandemic Blues Day. I managed to work, but still felt angsty about life. The angst didn’t clear up until the afternoon when I threw as much energy as I could muster into a newsletter deadline and actually felt productive about something.

Thank god for deadlines. I have been living by them for the past 20 years. They make me move forward in life.

I was hoping this morning I’d wake up feeling rested and ready to jump into a day (and night) of lot of editing and writing (yay for two massive deadlines at once for work right now during the day, plus a personal project deadline in the evening).

But no. Again, a pending sense of dread. I thought, “I have to go into the office. I need a change of scenery.”

Don’t get me wrong – my work from home setup is pretty good. I tend to work well on the couch in the living room and the couch in one of the kid’s rooms, sometimes the cafe table in the backyard. I’m still adjusting to the latest version of my desk setup, which has a lovely view of trees, lots of light, an absurdly high-tech two-monitor and high speed GPU setup thanks to the fancy pants computer boyfriend, but frankly, it’s not comfortable and I think I finally figured out why.

My desk is just too damn big for me. After 20 years of working at generically, standard-sized desks, I’m EXHAUSTED from trying to make them work ergonomically for my small frame and short legs. Or maybe it’s not the desk as it is the chair. I’m about ready to slam down absurd amounts of money for one of those fancy Herman Miller Aeron chairs that I hear about all the time on NPR. (Or a knock-off, holy crap those things are expensive.)

I also love the 5-second commute to the desk. I feel like I get more done at home because I’m fresh in the head and do best diving into editing and writing first thing in the morning. The commute tends to chip away at that feeling by the time I get to the office.

Anyway, back to the start of the day.

I got out of bed with a defeated sigh from a poor night’s sleep, grabbed work clothes, scrubbed face, put on makeup, went downstairs to my sweet man of a boyfriend who suddenly realized his girlfriend was a distraught mess and tried to do what he could to help, packed up my computer, camera, lunch and flew out the door.

I thought I could make it to Poulsbo, 53 minutes away, without coffee and breakfast, but alas, I only made it to Chimacum and pulled into the Farm’s Reach, ordering an americano and breakfast burrito. After a few sips of coffee, the fog in my brain started to lift, as did the fog in the Chimacum Valley.

KEXP was playing Morrisey or the Smiths or some absurd nonsense like that which I despise, so I switched over to NPR, which was all politics. That was grating at first, but the Massachusetts primary results were interesting. A Kennedy, for the first time ever, lost an election.

Eventually I got tired of that and switched back over to KEXP, where the DJ was playing a song from one of the best albums of the year, “Untitled” by Sault.

Life started to feel a little more manageable.

Then the DJ announced requests for songs about getting through the first day of remote learning (boy, I feel for all those parents having to do double duty, as well as kids not being able to get the social interactions that are vital to their livelihood and development), one of them being Erasure.

Oh, Erasure. The band that introduced me to Brit pop in the 80s. Judge me all you want,, they were my first love for British music.

So, I’m heading down Highway 104, crossing over the fog-enveloped Hood Canal Bridge, stuck behind a semi, with a coffee in hand, belting out to Erasure’s “Respect” and suddenly feel OK with the world. For a second, life felt normal.

I thought about how pre-COVID, this scene was likely dreaded by most. Day in, day out, the drive, eating/drinking breakfast while driving, stuck behind slow vehicles, stressed about home life, work life, thinking about what to do about dinner that night, what’s the plan for this weekend, I need to make that doctor’s appointment, what did we do this summer, when was the last time I talked to my parents, I need to text back my sister …

But today, I embraced it. As sadistic as it may be, for a second, all the stresses taken for granted before March were felt and thought about and enjoyed.

Then the sky got a little brighter. And the fog started to lift.