It's become a ritual of sorts: I wake up in the morning and check my email. If I don't have any meetings in the City I don't bother getting dressed. I just keep going and worry about things like brushing my teeth later in the day.
I know this is a departure from the ritual I devised when I first began soloing, but, I don't know--things happen. Now I have calls to make; people need answers for things sooner rather than later. I tried conducting a few conference calls in Starbucks, but it was distracting, and getting dressed and walking over to coffee shops has become more of a time suck than a means of sanity maintenance. Leaving my house has become, well, a luxury of late.
B-friend's in a similar boat. He's almost done with school and working on his thesis (I've been reminded countless times that it's not just "a paper," and I've reminded him countless times that I don't mean any disrespect when I refer to it that way.) He's also a finalist in a national design competition, and working double duty to finish his concept with his team this week before flying out for his final presentation.
And did I mention the size of our house--more like a standalone apartment? It affords us comfort, yes, but very CLOSE comfort. Our second bedroom subs as his office, my office, and the runover room for whatever personal effects won't fit in our other bedroom. His station snakes around the south and east walls, and my station lines the north side. On the west wall is a shelf unit where we've stacked everything that won't fit on or under our desks--old files, conference schwag, magazines we think we'll read someday; and on b-friend's exclusive shelf, greasy towels, a bike crank, a tool caddy and a head scratcher.
On the floor he has clothes strategically strewn into the following piles-
- stuff that might need washing (he'll let it sit for a day, and if it still smells he'll wash it),
- sweaty stuff that needs to air out, and
- stuff that needs washing but that he won't be wearing in public and can have another go round.
I mention our shared office to illustrate the atmosphere we've been stewing in lately. It's a little, shall we say, tense.
Now, as we near the end of his semester, and as I have some key projects heating up that confine me to a place with a reliable Web connection, we find ourselves spending copious amounts of time together, but no "Together Time." It's an odd form of loneliness. In the past, if I had a bad day at work, I'd look forward to getting home and relaxing with B-friend. But now we are home, and there hasn't been any downtime.
The situation is exacerbated by the many phone calls we've had to make for a number of purposes. Typically he hardly uses the phone, but lately he's living on it to confer with his design team. Before this competition the phone was my domain; I was the only one who used a phone voice in our house. Recently I learned that b-friend's phone voice is loud. Very loud. He also sneezes loudly. I'm starting to think he's trying to blow-out my eardrums on purpose. He doesn't think that Skype is such a great thing and prefers not to sit in on my conference calls, but he can't go anywhere. Would I mind, he's asked, if I plug in my headset when I speak on conference calls? JeeZUSS!
I remember when I started working at home, just over a year ago. I figured that b-friend still had a year and a half of grad school, this would be a fantasy period for us, before he had to succumb to the realities of the corporate world, when we could break and prepare lunch together. I could see him off before he went to class. We could take walks in the late afternoon to blow off some steam. Hell, maybe if the mood struck us, we could even ...
None of these things have happened.
Our lives have, however, been surprisingly harmonious. As I said, for a long time I left the house every day, which offered us small surges of renewal when I arrived home and saw him there at his desk. We had something new to talk about, even if it was only the weather.
"Is it cold out there?"
"It's OK, but you might want to wear a jacket if you go out."
"OK...Which coffee shop did you go to?"
"Gaylords, and guess who I saw over there?..."
Now however, conversation is not appreciated, let alone any attempts to vent.
Me: "Oh my God, I'm so annoyed. I just spoke with-"
Him: "Yeah I know. I was in the room, remember?"
I can't do post-mortems with b-friend. He's not wired to do replays; he has this irritating way of moving on.
He tried to teach me the fundamentals of the Adobe Creative Suite so that I won't interrupt him every time I need something resized or tweaked. I'm in a purgatory of competence; I can go into a file and fix things, but certainly not start anything from scratch, and I'm still a bit of a one-trick pony. Some of our biggest spats have occurred over InDesign or Photoshop.
"Please help me. I won't bug you again."
"I taught you to do this, remember? How do you flatten an image?"
"Pleeeeeeease! I don't have time to remember!"
"What would you do, Jory, if I wasn't here every day. What did you do before me?"
I begged the in-house designer, duh!
These exchanges result in him surrendering his time begrudgingly, coming over to my laptop and bemoaning my solicitous use of browser windows.
"You need to close some of these."
"I need all of them."
"Twenty windows! This is ridiculous--I'm closing this one..."
"No don't! That one's essential."
"It's a Word Document! You can just call it up again when you need it."
"I like to have it open for when I'm ready for it. On Tuesday."
"Your system is going to crash."
Never have I known someone who was so concerned about open applications. OK, so I've crashed my machine a few times--big whoop.
"OK," he says to me, becoming my fourth grade teacher, "so you're in the wrong application. Why is that? Why can't you be doing this in Illustrator?"
I hate when he quizzes me.
On the occasion that he refuses to help me because I've been taught a procedure and should know how to do it, and I am alone with In-Design, I do what I must and work alone, sometimes in tears. I bemoan how stupid the programs are--why can't I open such-and-such in InDesign, when I can do it in Illustrator? This doesn't make sense! Whoever made this program sucks and should be shot, or have to produce a 468x60 banner with no design experience whatsoever! They need to make a Creative Suite product for people with poor memories! I gripe until B-friend can't take it anymore.
"Are you asking for my help?" he says.
"No, I have to do this on my own, remember?"
He pushes his roll-chair over to my desk, saying under his breath, "Well of course you can't do this--you have too many windows open!"
This has become his stock explanation for everything, from lost email connectivity to my moodiness. In B-friend's mind, we could have world peace if we just shut down some of our browser windows.
Stay tuned for Part II.
Oh, this is a stitch! I can just hear Jess saying these things to you...and your sad and pitiful replies back. I'd give anything to be a computer wiz and fix every problem that crops up. You have Jess...I have Mike. I really love this Jor.
Posted by: Joy | March 26, 2006 at 07:27 PM
Jory, my husband is s computer tech and that's what I hear all the time too - you have too many windows open, you should reboot your system, it's going to crash. I think it's geek code for "I love you" :)
Posted by: Love Coach Rinatta | March 27, 2006 at 10:35 AM
I feel your pain! I don't work at home all the time anymore (thank goodness), but my home office space is a portion of my husband's music studio/office. When I try to work up there, I end up sounding all snippy: "Can you put on headphones or turn that down? Do you have to play drums now? How many times are you going to play that track over and over again?!"
Did I mention that we still IM each other across the room rather than talk? It's a sad state of affairs.
Posted by: Jane | March 27, 2006 at 02:53 PM
Hey Jory, have you ever heard of Lynda.com? Maybe you could save some of your sanity and get a monthly subscription. Then you would have access to all of the online tutorials on how to do things. Yes, you would have to sit through the tutorials to find out your answers, but it would be on your own time. And perhaps you could surprise b-friend with how you figured something out "on your own".
Just a thought. ;)
And while I don't live with my bofyriend, we vacationed together last year for two weeks in a small cottage. After a while I kept thinking "Man, he's breathing SO LOUD!!!! or Why does he always have to put the TV on immediately. Ugh." So I feel a teensy bit of your pain.
Ever thought of getting the Bose Noise Cancelling headphones? Can you listen to music while you work?
Posted by: Kayll | March 28, 2006 at 07:27 AM
Great post. I used to date a computer tech, and besides my subpar bedroom prowess, she nagged me about my computer habits as well..lol
Posted by: HumanityCritic | March 29, 2006 at 03:45 PM