What Grief Taught Me About Working From Home

I started working from home in September of 2017, just around 3 weeks after my Dad died. I was 22 years old.

Needless to say, it was not an easy time to live in my brain.

It was also a challenging time to be thrust into self-management. Between the grief and the shame spirals that inevitably accompany such a profound loss, I had a hard enough time remembering to eat, let alone exercise complete autonomy over my working life and schedule.

As we gear up toward the one-year mark of self-isolation, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about those first few weeks I spent working from home in 2017.

I was living in Orlando at the time, in a condo nestled between the downtown area, several highways and an extraordinarily loud train we’d named Clarence. I slept on the couch most nights, because for some reason depression and my bed simply did not mix (and also it was a really great couch).

In the mornings, I’d pry open my laptop in the dark—curtains drawn, blue light illuminating my face. Most days, I’d sit just like that all day: On the floor, in the dark, lit up only by a screen.

Sometimes, when it was bad, I’d waste the whole day re-reading my Dad’s text messages and Uber Eats-ing 15 dollar smoothies.

I was working two contract jobs at the time: The digital marketing role I’d gone remote with and a gig as an executive assistant/social media manager/tour coordinator that I’d picked up on top.

My to-do list was miles long each day, and, like many assistants, I rarely went to bed feeling like I’d gotten anything done at all. But looking back, it’s remarkable to see how productive I really was.

In those first few months of depression and grief, I rewrote my entire future: I started working two jobs, moved to New York, sold all my furniture and learned how to be an adult.

It was a transformative life experience that echoes many of the ones I’ve heard since last March, when so many people were either laid off or asked to work from home for an undisclosed period of time.

Suddenly and all at once, a large part of our workforce—many of them young adults fresh out of college—were asked to not only sit at home all day, isolate from friends and family and try not to ruminate on the increasingly concerning state of the world, but also to figure out a way to “hustle” from the one private place that was supposed to be safe from work.

Remember that old phrase, “Don’t bring your work home with you?” Yeah, doesn’t really work anymore.

In the years since that first bleak September, I’ve dedicated myself to exploring these places where work, life and balance intersect, particularly for creative entrepreneurs like myself who need to learn and practice self-management skills.

I’ve opened my own business, the Pretty Decent Internet Café, where I facilitate these conversations and teach digital marketing lessons and labs.

I’ve developed a vision for my life and a strategy to make it real. I went from working from home to working for myself, a small but profound difference in the way I engage with my day-to-day life.

And if I had to sum up everything I’ve learned from both research and experience, it’d be that working from home, even before you dive headfirst into entrepreneurship, is a practice in self-management.

 

Self-management is defined as the ability to regulate our emotions and control our behavior.

We start practicing it as children, when we learn habits like brushing our teeth, making the bed and not throwing tantrums in the middle of Walmart.

Particularly as we grow into what my friends and I call “Freshman Adulthood,” or those first few years in the workforce, self-management becomes one of the most valuable skills to develop. And the practice of self-management largely revolves around our ability to regulate our own personal set of resources: Time, Money and Motivation.

In those early days of working from home, my goal each day was simple: Be as productive as possible. Internally, my worth was measured by the amount of things I checked off my to-do list each day. Externally, my pay was measured by the amount of hours it took me to do it.

This was an unsustainable way of working and existing in the world. For someone in a period of intense grief or depression, a hyper-focus on external validation and motivation is a recipe for burnout.

And surprise: I burnt out.

Which is in part why, years later, I was so excited to learn about “deep work,” a term coined by Cal Newport to describe a practice of distraction-free concentration on tasks that create new value in the world. Deep work exists in contract to “shallow work,” menial tasks that create no new value but are often necessary to complete.

Those first few months I spent grieving and working from home felt like a bottomless pit of shallow work tasks. Every day was a ritual in answering emails, responding to comments, checking forms and crossing off lists.

Now, to be fair, I was 22 years old and an executive assistant—it’s only natural that my working life was a bit mundane. But what I know now and wish I’d known then is that I, Lexi Merritt, create new value when I write. And I was not writing nearly enough.

If I could go back in time to that grief-stricken girl, I would tell her that she has more to offer the world than a completed to-do list. I would ask her to reserve an hour a day for herself, simply to show up and write. I’d tell her about Julia Cameron’s morning pages, a practice filling three pages of a notebook before starting anything else.

I’m sure that version of myself would’ve responded that she doesn’t have the time to even think about such ideas. But I still wish she would’ve known.

In the end, what I’ve learned about working from home is a lot like what I’ve learned about grief: It gets easier, but it never stops being a challenge.

The best thing you can do is observe and learn how to care for yourself. Pay attention to the moments when your eyes light up and you lose complete track of time, and do those activities as often as you can.

Create new value in the world. Remember that joy, like pain, is inevitable, and try not to get hung up on it. Designate private spaces that are entirely work-free, even if it’s just the space between the four corners of your bed.

If you’re struggling to work from home, remember that in the Before World, there would inevitably be some days when you don’t have “it,” whatever “it” may be. Remember to give yourself that same grace now that you’re the only one looking over your shoulder.

And when in doubt, remember to practice self-compassion for the parts of you that actually do need time off to watch The West Wing or play the Sims for 5 hours straight.