The fall of the work and life wall - One month into the lock down

"It is the best of times, it is the worst of times, it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness, it is the epoch of belief, it is the epoch of incredulity, it is the season of summer, it is the season of Darkness, it is the spring of hope, it is the winter of despair, we have everyone with us, we have no one before us, we are all going to come out of this together, we were all going direct the other way." - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (modified)

Today marks a month since the day I started working from home. It started off as an office advisory and then extended due to the nationwide lock down in India. The same holds true for my wife. For my three year old, school has been off since the 9th of March.

While the nature of work itself has not changed much, there have been a bunch of lifestyle changes that we are now going through, and again a bunch of coping mechanisms to deal with the same.

In the pre-coronavirus world, we had a reasonably good routine going everyday. The routine revolved around our daughter's school & day care timings - in at 9 AM and out by 5 PM. I thus left home at 8.30 AM every day, dropped her en route to work, left work at 4.30 PM and picked her up on the way home. From 5 PM to 8 PM, either me or my wife (ideally both) would spend time with our daughter. This involved taking her cycling or to the park to play, activities at home, cooking dinner, and eating together as a family. She then went to sleep by 8 PM, after which the pending office work got done. We had also restricted gadget access to the little one, to ensure she doesn't grow too dependent on them. So when we spent time with her, our laptops were away, our phones were responded to only in case of incoming calls, and we watched no TV.

Now, my wife and I spend most of the day glued to our screens, either on video / audio calls or just plain getting our work done. Our daughter has school off and not much in the way of guided school work to do (not being old enough for it yet). So, in her mind, its as good as a holiday, and she wants to play. But, neither of us can now spend as much time with her as we used to. Even if we take a three hour slot out to play with her, she still needs watching over the rest of the time. We have to try and schedule our calls so they don't overlap to the extent possible. In spite of this, there are now cases aplenty when we are both at our screens with the headsets connected, and we have to ask a three year old to be quiet (not in the least bit easy). We got a dose of our own medicine last week when she came to us and said, "I'm going into the room and shutting it because I have a call." And she took her little make believe phone and went in and started a make believe conversation. At that age, she needs a more varied experience than just seeing people working at their screens most of the time.

Further, with the country on lock down and the house help (justifiably so) at home as well, housework has added to the already busy schedules. The time saved on commutes (and the absence of annoying telemarketing calls) has been more than made up for by the time needed to cook the two extra meals (and four extra snacks for the child) every day. We also need to spend a lot of time to ensure her learning continues, and a sense of routine / discipline is maintained. The temptation is strong to just open up an app on a tablet or put on the TV for her, but we don't want her to get used to screens this early. Hence, time is needed to ensure she learns.

With all this, almost no time is left for ourselves - to read a book, talk about the day, watch a movie which isn't Frozen, or sip a cup of coffee in peace - even on weekends. Which, after 4 weeks locked in, has started to take a toll. We're just taking it a day at a time now till the lock down ends.

Are you also facing similar challenges? Or do you have a different point of view? Do leave your comments below.