Summer Office
/21
WHY WILL EVERYTHING BE THIS WAY?
Let’s imagine the past few years of our lives as a play. We are the actors. Our work, homes, schools, kindergartens, and everyday routines—the stage. And the director… well, like a mushroom sprouting after the rain, it’s that pesky little virus. We, the everyday actors, hear the script for the coming years and exchange glances.
We laugh.
We shrug and loudly declare: “Nonsense!” We refuse to participate in such a TRAGICOMEDY.
The script clearly states: Work moves home. Schools—onto remote blue-screen learning. Lunches—into the kitchen. Travel—restricted to our neighborhood forests. Cities, streets, and roads empty. Stores hit “pause.” Everyone’s smiles tucked behind masks, hands soaked in disinfectant that smells less than delightful.
We said we wouldn’t play along.
Yet here we are—after a full year has passed, we’ve changed our minds. Obediently following the “director’s” instructions, slipping into our new roles, we’ve learned to go with the flow. We’ve realized that not all comedies are purely funny, and not all tragedies drag you into a night-black depression.
We decorated our home workspaces with fresh flowers, decided that even when no one sees, we can at least minimally dress up for ourselves, awakened the winter-dormant skills in our kitchens, discovered that each of us has a decent chef living inside, listened more carefully to our children, spent more time together as a family, and found joy in simple walks in nature. I’m sure many adopted cats and dogs along the way. And in the end… after heavily critiquing the original script, we performed it—surpassing even the “director’s” expectations.
The play seems set to continue, but now the most wonderful actor arrives: the WARM SEASON, ready to tug our altered lives toward joy and brighter emotions.
We’ll settle on terraces, maybe even move our work desks with their blue screens outdoors, let our eyes rest on open-air horizons instead of winter-sleep and spring-rain–washed windows. We’ll eat outside, walk barefoot, tilt our faces to catch a few sun-kisses, gradually letting our skin take on a light sun-kissed glow and stock up on vitamin D.
In front of us, “bowls” of strawberries and blueberries from grandma’s garden. Between minute-long breaks, we’ll escape into forests and meadows, stringing together strawberry necklaces, gathering handfuls of blooming wildflowers, maybe picking a small bouquet for ourselves.
And then back home—already our workplaces, our children’s schools, our little restaurants—all year round.
But in this chapter of “life as it happens,” our HOME offices will bloom, smell fragrant, catch the warm breeze, and transform into SUMMER offices.
And that, I must say, already sounds like a rather good twist in a script we once didn’t like.
Mua,
V.
