This morning i got in the car to go to the gym,i turned on the ignition and the radio started playing and the song that played was the Sound of Silence. Those who know me are aware that I lost my hearing overnight somewhere in the beginning of the pandemic, I went to bed hearing and woke up to silence, well almost silence, the tinuutis that was bothering me for several days was still there. In the beginning of my hearing loss journey this song would make me cry, cry for the silence, cry from understanding I will not be able to hear again , cry from the need to adapt to a new reality that I did not choose for myself.
Silence has a sound, even quietness has a sound. When I wake up every morning before I put my hearing aids in, the world is silent, kinda, since as the song goes silence does have a sound.
Somedays the silence is difficult, it reminds me of what i can’t anymore and what will never be my normal again, what i have lost and what i will miss in the future. Other times the silence is welcomed. The world is a very noisy place. All this noise causes listening fatigue as hearing with hearing aids is not easy on the brain, it requires extra work and some days my head hurts like no tomorrow. These days the hearing aids are removed the instant I enter the car and the silence in the car is just what I need.
We constantly hear about pros and cons of working from home, but all of this is coming from the point of view of either the employer or the employee. No point of view from the other people who share the same home.
My husband had a period of working from home many years ago when our children were small, we had 3 kids in elementary school and a dog. House was semi quiet from kid noise in the mornings, however as I was a stay at home mom at that point, this was my prime homework time – vacuuming, cleaning, cooking and such. My experience of working from home as the other person in the house was terrible. His office space was the kitchen, this meant stopping the dishwasher as it was too noisy during his meetings and forgetting to turn it on again, no vacuuming as he had phone calls, using the kitchen was impossible. I hated it! I was very happy when he switched jobs and worked back from the office full time.
And then the pandemic started and we all worked from home and had to navigate space, phone calls and everything else. Granted this time around our kids are adults, but with everyone returning home for a while we managed, in the begining with one dog and then with two.
This year the house started to empty again as workers returned to the office, however my husband still works from home.His company does not seem keen on returning back to the office for whatever corporate reason they have. How does that affect me, you ask? We work opposite hours, i have been relegated to the downstairs in the mornings. Our dog is not allowed to bark as it interrupts meetings , i am not allowed to sing in the shower and not because i am off key. Vacuuming is still not allowed during zoom calls, using the blender is not allowed, singing in the kitchen is not allowed and I’m not even talking about listening to music, at least in this aspect I am lucky as my hearing aids have bluetooth and it streams straight to my ears. But my home balance is off, i am a guest who is too afraid to interrupt during the day.
My point of view is if you do not let your employees back in the office then you must endure barking dogs and human activity in the house. Be reasonable as an employer about what the expectation is for working from home if you refuse to give a work from the office alternative. Not all of us have big houses with dedicated office space, most of us have normal size houses and live in a suburban town with shared spaces, with neighborhood kids screaming outside, our own dogs barking and the other humans in the house living. I know some work from home is great, but have you ever stopped to ask how the others in the shared space feel about this? Sage (our dog) and i just want to bark at the amazon, ups, fedex drivers, i really don’t want to vacuum but i don’t want to be forced to have 5 minutes break between zoom class to clean a space and really i do want to sing out loud and not only in the shower!
I left the gym this morning with my usual gym attire – black Costco yoga pants and t-shirt that was on top of the pile of clean laundry. As i was leaving a young lady was entering, now young for me is anyone under 40, this young lady was perfectly dressed in matching yoga pants and sports bra, hair looked perfect and even her eyeliner was perfectly drawn.
I looked at her and wondered when did i change from being dresses to the T for the gym or for anywhere else to looking like something my dog dragged home 99% of my time. Could it be the fact that i’ve been married for more than 30 years, the fact that i’m not really a girly girl or maybe the problem is that i really don’t have the patience or that i really don’t care. The fact it that if i need more than 10 minutes to get ready it is too much for me.
After pondering my gym outfit existence my brain continued on the crazy path, why bother looking so good for the gym? If i would have been single and looking i would have gone and dressed like this in the afternoon as the morning crowd at the gym is a different demographic than i would thing a young lady would be looking for, but then again what do i know.
From there i continued on this very weird thinking path and realised that maybe that’s her motivation in the morning to get up and go to the gym and it probably works for her. For me, it’s a different story, i really dislike the gym and i really love the disheveled mom look, a look that i really perfected over the years and as the Collin Raye country song goes – That’s my story and i’m sticking to it!
Recently there has been a Tik Tok going around with a voice over that says – being on vacation is better than being at work. And despite most of us agreeing with this as a matter of principal, some of us, me included, have a hard time disconnecting and enjoying our vacation. This summer i went on a cruise and as a true workaholic i did pay extra for WIFI access. As life tends to throw us curveballs – the internet was great for the phone, not so much for my laptop! I have to admit that letting go was not easy for me but i made a conscious decision to let go and go to the business center and work. I decided to be present, to let go and enjoy spending time with my family, visited new places and i even read a book or two and enjoyed my coffee in relative peace. This was not easy for me but it did force me to stop and take a look at how i am living and remind me that we all need to disconnect. I still check my emails during my days off, but i try to limit myself to checking only 3 times a day and not constantly. #business#work#coffee#vacationsareneeded#workholics#familytime
This Labor day morning I was enjoying my morning coffee when an article caught my eye, the title of the article was “quiet firing”, we all heard about the great resignation & quiet quitting so naturally i had to read it as it intrigued my curiosity.
Quiet firing means that an employer will make your work life miserable by demoting, adding extra unpaid work and generally mistreating you so you will quit, this way the employer does not have to pay you severance as they did not fire you. There is no need to prove that your performance was bad, involving HR or paper work.
The article spoke about this as a new trend, but as being employed for many years, I know it has always been there. We have all seen it in our professional life and sadly general life. Instead of quiet firing we all need to call it in its true name – a hostile work environment .
This is not caused by one person, the article kept talking about the work place’s behavior, but workplaces/ companies are not some anonymous entity, they are built with people who are not only demonstrating bad leadership but are also letting the rest of their employees know that they are condoning it. Should we stay and suffer? Look for a new job while being mistreated or just start speaking about it publicly? I have no answers as each person has their own decision to make.
The last couple of years there were many movies about people with superpowers, great fantasy escape movies and I’m sure we all at one point wanted a superpower, it seemed like fun. But what is our superpower in everyday life, a friend asked me that this week and I had to stop and think as we were talking about our professional life but truthfully we need a power that encompasses all our life, Listening is a skill, it is not the same as hearing. Listening means you are an active participant in a conversation and yet many mistakenly think that if we hear, we are listening as well. I thought so as well and then one night I lost my hearing, I woke up with just ringing in my ears and nothing else. What no one told me was that hearing aids are not glasses, although I have a very good pair with the latest technology, I don’t hear like before, crowded places are a nightmare, masks are terrible for those of us who are hearing impaired. But, this forced me to pay attention, it takes a lot of effort to read body language and actually listen to what someone tells you and I gained a superpower! I can’t fly, i can’t change time but i am present and i am a much better listener than before my hearing loss, My superpower is being present in a conversation, the super power of observation and the ability to actually listen.
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