by Chloe Gunn
At Catalyst we are striving to attain normality in our personal lives and reliability in our professional life.
The latter is appearing the easier of the two. To maintain our community, share our struggles and tips for working at home, we will be publishing a regular blog with a different Catalysta each time. Meet Billy, an eLearning Advisor from our Wellington HQ.
We start, as usual with routine – what works best for Billy? “Even though I'm working from home now I'm trying to keep the same schedule as I had in the office. Waking up in the morning having a shower and breakfast.”
To answer the question on everyone's lips – peanut butter on toast. Then Billy starts work at his usual time.
There is an undertone of sadness in Billy’s voice, I probe, “what’s got you glum Billy?,” there may have been a tear in Billy’s eyes, or it may be my overdramatic ad-lib, either way, Billy says, “the biggest downside to working from home is not being able to socialise with an amazing group of people at the office.”
Billy and I sit in this sorrow for a moment, ‘but this too shall pass,’ so I prompt Billy to tell me what he’s enjoying about working from home, “it's been really fun being able to blast my music as loudly as I’d like without disturbing anyone.”
Top tip: Loud music also disguises loud colleague-less sobbing. Moving on.
I asked Billy what music he’s into at the moment, he said, “ I'm quite into listening to cello rock and cello metal, its a sub-genre of rock music characterised by the use of cellos as primary instruments. Curious? Give it a listen.
Billy has some sound advice for his fellow workers at home, he stresses the importance of remembering this change is temporary and not to get too frazzled and keep your routine as regular as possible. I guess on the same note we need to remember that this ‘track-pant season’ is also temporary and we must not get too attached to this Monday to Friday level of comfort.
Speaking of Monday to Friday, any hobbies you plan to take up during the new grey area that used to be known as ‘Saturday and Sunday’? “Outside of work time I enjoy playing all of the video games that I hadn’t had a chance to play yet.”
Any particular games? “I was lucky enough to grab a copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons before the lockdown happened. This is the first Animal Crossing game I've played and I am absolutely loving it.”
I’ve played this myself and fully support Billy’s choice (not a sponsored ad– but also, will not turn down free games).
I asked Billy if he has any other comments to share, Billy said, “I'd like to give a special thank you to everybody at Catalyst who made it possible for us to work from home during this hard time.”
Billy isn’t wrong, our internal systems team have worked hard, throughout the previous month (we have been preparing for COVID-19 before it brought its nasty self to New Zealand), making sure everyone would have what they needed to work from home if it came to it. Thank you to Ian and Chelsea, without you we wouldn’t of been able to continue to work so easily.
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Catalyst is a New Zealand owned and operated company where openness, long term relationships, community and diversity are essential characteristics of how we do business. Since 1997, Catalyst has been enabling success with expert open source solutions, and clients all over the world trust us with their mission-critical systems.