Hello friends! This is Peregrino, a newsletter about the journey. You’re about to read essay #37 of “40 Before 40,” a memoir I intend to finish before I enter midlife in Q1 2024. The previous 36 essays in this series can be found here.
In 2018, one of my coworkers left our company to join a start-up. He told me he would work from home since his team was spread throughout the US. I remember saying I couldn’t fathom the idea of working from home. My commute to and from wasn’t terrible: about thirty minutes each way, forty-five minutes with traffic. It allowed me to listen to many audiobooks and podcasts. The office had stand-up desks, ergonomic office chairs, cold brew on tap, and all the snacks you could eat. If I wanted to put my head down and do some work, I could go into a meeting room, put my headphones on, and grind. If I wanted to socialize, I could pivot my chair and talk to my peers. It was a good setup.
Two years later, COVID forced remote work on many people, including me. Working from home became the norm, and I needed to figure out where to put my home office. An 8ft by 8ft nook in the garage seemed promising. The previous owners framed and insulated the nook’s opening to the garage and added a door and an AC unit. One of the first things I did when we moved into this home was clean that nook because it smelled like cat piss because it used to be the previous owner’s cat’s lair. The nook had become a trinket closet, and now it was time for it to become an office.
I turned a table we bought from IKEA into my desk and brought a couple of monitors from the office. An office chair completed my very primitive setup. Slowly but surely, I started investing in things like a stand-up desk, a decent webcam, a microphone, and noise-canceling headphones. I’ve worked remotely for three companies in four years and don’t think I’ll ever return to working in an office building.
Adjustment
When I started working from home, we had four and three-year-old boys and an eight-month-old baby girl. Suddenly, I didn’t have to rush to get out of the house to beat traffic. I would get up at the same time as the kids, make coffee, hang out, and tag Diana in around 8:00 for me to start my work day. I would go out to the garage and then into my office. If I were sneaky enough, my kids wouldn’t even notice me making my second cup of coffee in the kitchen.
Lunch dates with Diana became the norm. Sometimes, I would come inside and talk out loud about a problem I was trying to solve. Diana would listen to me even though she didn’t know what I was talking about, and most times, I would come up with a potential solution just by talking about it with her. I jokingly told her I was doing rubber duck debugging, except in this case, she was a stand-in for the rubber duck.
I sold my car because there was no end in sight for working remotely. It was as if I was burning the ships and deciding not to return to work in an office setting. Having one vehicle has pros and cons, but we have handled it rather well, even four years after downsizing to one family vehicle. It has only been mildly inconvenient in that sometimes we have to say no to certain things we want to do, or I need to ask for a ride or use rideshare apps to get to places when Diana needs the car to take the kids somewhere.
Flood
Phoenix's summers are brutal, and even though my office had its own AC unit, it was ancient and loud. It became a problem during conference calls because if I was talking at the same time the AC was blowing cool air into the office, the people on the other end couldn’t hear me. Luckily, this didn’t happen frequently enough for me to do something about it.
Having the door to my office and the garage door into the house as physical barriers from my children allowed me to have a space where I knew I wouldn’t be disturbed while in meetings or trying to do some focused work. That was until the whole thing got flooded.
The laundry room and my office shared a wall. Sandwiched between the walls is the drain from the washing machine. We started noticing the floor in the laundry room would get moist after running the washing machine. Then, there was a little pool, and suddenly, water was leaking through the bottom of the wall into my office. The laundry and kitchen pipes developed a thick build-up in the five years we had lived here and needed to be pressure washed. The bottom half of the drywall needed to be replaced since it had water damage. I had to find a new place for my office.
Diana and I decided early on that we would not get a king-size bed because we didn’t want our kids to sleep with us. This decision left some unused space in the corner of the room where my desk and chair fit perfectly, so I “temporarily” moved my office into the bedroom. I didn’t return to the 8ft by 8ft storage unit/ex-cat lair. Adapt, improvise, overcome.
Together
It’s wild to think my two younger kids haven’t experienced their dad leaving home for work. On top of that, Diana started homeschooling, which means we’re all under the same roof most of the time. Extracurriculars, trips to the library, and grocery pick-ups are the main outings of our family. But for the most part, we’re home together.
Our dinner table doubles as a school desk for our children, and a linen closet has been repurposed as a crafts and school supplies cabinet. It’s not uncommon for us to adorn the walls and windows of our home with the kids' art. Sometimes, they get creative and experiment with other mediums to express themselves artistically. Sharpies on the kitchen cabinet, pencils on the bed frame, and crayons on the wall are ways our children express their art.
Diana is a big fan of reading aloud to the kids, so it’s normal for us to have a dozen library books at any given time. At some point, we got a trampoline, which still gets a lot of use. The swing set got trashed this past summer, and a climbing structure took its place. The backyard is the kids’ domain, where they play and fight, make peace, and come up with their own games.
At the end of the day, there’s much tidying up to do before dinner. And sometimes, the chaos can be overwhelming. One of our kids, tired of his siblings' antics, demands alone time at least once a week. I explained to him that sharing a living space with five other humans is challenging and that our only alone time will be in the toilet. And sometimes, that’s not even the case.
I know that not everybody can live like this, but Diana and I have decided this is what’s best for our family, even if our home isn’t spotless and all the challenges this entails. But what brings me comfort is the excitement of seeing our kids grow, learn, and love each other. I’m confident that spending this much time as a family will only bear good fruit in the future. I want my kids to reflect on their childhood and say, “We were always together.” Whether they’re fond of these memories or not that’s a different story.
In the meantime, we’re going all in.
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Before you go
Do you work from home? How do you like it?
Would you want to be a digital nomad (with or without your family)?
What’s your favorite childhood memory?
Nice papal blessing! Those are true treasures to have in a Catholic home.
I don't usually work from home, and that's my preference for now. My brain is very tended toward compulsion, which means good boundaries between work and home help me to manage stress. A desk in the bedroom would really grate my nerves; I admire you!