The lonely shirt(s) in the wardrobe, an ode to 2020

The day started as usual, well the 'new' normal during lockdown. I "commuted" from the breakfast table (which was now also my wifes' office desk) to my office. I turned the laptop on and made some last minute changes to slides that I would be presenting later that day. On this day I would be welcoming some of our new hires into the company and walking through some of our processes.

So, what made this day any different, a day worth writing about in this article?

"Suf, oh my god, I have never seen you in a shirt before!"

I also have FIVE blue shirts

My colleague, the co-host of the welcome event was in shock, I had known her by about six months by now. She joined our company roughly as lock-down kicked in and so we had never physically met. Ironically, I also was one of her interviewers (virtually) before she joined. In all this time, she had never seen me in a shirt, let alone the crisp white shirt I had worn that day.

"Oh, I'm going for a job interview later today" I replied drably. It used to be a joke, or atleast it made people laugh when I used that line, ten years ago, but it just felt a bit glib today, so I quickly corrected it. Mental note to myself: Don't make a joke about leaving your current company when you are presenting to new joiners!!

The truth was much simpler. I don't work for a company that requires me to be dressed super smart, 'smart casual' or even 'casual' was the norm. However, after months of working from home in the same office I was tired of T-Shirts. I wanted to remind myself of what it was like, to wear a shirt, to be 'normal' again.

This was fairly significant. My wardrobe is pretty simple, but a small part of it had slowly become a 'no-go' zone in the past few months. I had visited that zone this morning. It was surprising, I have six white shirts. They were on the top rack, but they weren't alone.

How did we become so quickly adjusted to only talking to people virtually?

I also have FIVE blue shirts, plus a blue checked shirt and a checked red shirt. Oh, I also have a few grey shirts too, totally forgot about them. Whoa, two pink shirts and I've got black shirts, seriously? Two of them?? These were just the formal shirts.

In this unfortunate year of 2020 many people have had far worse problems and really I know my shirt problem is the least significant thing to be concerned about. For that I am really thankful as well as really sorry for those who have had a terrible year. I hope if you are reading this your year has been bearable and you are in good health.

For me, this whole thing was hilarious. Imagine that, there were people who had never ever seen me wearing a shirt. As a natural introvert, I was now suddenly looking at things totally differently. How were people viewing me, how did I view people that I now only saw virtually?

Then I realised, how I had so quickly adjusted from the way we were to the way we were in 2020. How did we become so quickly adjusted to only talking to people virtually? How did we become adjusted to dividing our time into 30 minute slots, where we no long worked with people but instead we just had meetings with them. How did we get adjusted so quickly to not chatting at work with people face to face.

So, it made me wonder what life would be like when we get back to normal. The obvious changes would be the commute, or maybe working from home would be the new normal. What I really look forward to is meeting people, wearing my shirts, maybe even the black ones, cause they are cool right ?

Wishing you all a great 2021 :)