Franklin Matters: Franklin TV: WFH (Mostly) - COVID life & work, day-by-day

Monday, April 5, 2021

Franklin TV: WFH (Mostly) - COVID life & work, day-by-day

by Pete Fasciano, Executive Director 04/04/2021

The COVID lifestyle is not anyone’s first choice, but for those among us with past WFH experience (working from home), our disciplines return – like muscle memory. (It’s like riding a bike.) In that sense, I’m fortunate.

It’s oh-dark-thirty. No alarm, but I wake (sorta). In those first moments I accept each day for what it is – a gift. It is mine to make; mine to quietly savor. Mr. Coffee is my friend. I shuffle from kitchen to office. I shuffle through my email. After some thinking, writing and hitting [Send] several times. Then there is what needs doing – today, tomorrow, and in the days ahead. By now the Sun has decided to show up.

The week is peppered with Zoom meetings here and there. The day is peppered with typical office humdrum – pay bills, more email [Reply]. There is documenting of the technical changes that COVID has wrought across our facilities. These changes have spawned a rolling rebuild over the past year. There is more planning and research for technical changes yet to come. I click–out some online orders for equipment and supplies. Boxes arrive through the week. With our studio closed, I’m ‘Shipping & Receiving’.

Now and then I deliver the boxes to the studio; restart whatever stopped working; fix whatever broke. I pick up the mail. A COVID-based routine.

Through the week there are small reminders. The mask and hand sanitizer hanging on the car door tell me why things are the way they are. For now. Just for now. That new normal is a–comin’. Just as I have embraced this day, so too, I shall rise enthusiastically to tomorrow, and eventually to that new normal – at oh-dark-thirty.