Making “working alone” not “working lonely”
Published August 7, 2024
NOTE: This is not going to be some ‘oh, woe is me’ post — it’s actually about some fun ways I found to work from home.
So I work from home and work completely alone — my office is up in one corner of the house and I live in the middle of nowhere. Except for the occasional UPS truck or train whistle, the rest of the world could be gone for all I know. Honestly, it gets lonely. (I used to have cats coming and going, but they … well, they liked to “claim” things in the office so they had to go.)
I actually like working in an office with people. I just don’t like commuting, and it’s not like that’s an option. So I’ve come up with ways to feel a bit more connected and a bit less lonely alone.
Got me a friend
I couldn’t have cats, so I got a bunny. Not intentionally — I was looking for a small animal, and in one of those coincidences the universe tosses out, the local humane society was helping rehome some rescued bunnies that very week. And after some reading I realized that bunnies hate being in a cage. They actually get sick and depressed. So after a few weeks, the bunny got the run of my office. Like most bunnies, she’s litter trained, so no worries aside from vacuuming up bit of hay that get scattered.
The bunny usually keeps herself to herself, but jumps when she hears the treat box shake, and sometimes taps my leg for skritchies. And she’s always interested in whatever I’m doing around the office — new boxes, watering plants, whatever. Low-maintenance but friendly. Perfect.
Listening to humans
I like music when I work, sure, but I wanted more. Specifically, I like music with live DJs — they remind me that there’s a world out there. But I don’t want to hear anything about politics or (ugh) depressing American news. Solution: Canadian radio. It took a bit of hunting, but I found several classic-rock stations with live, bantering DJs up north. Listening to them is like listening to people in an office — I feel less disconnected. (I even text in occasional comments or contest entries and have become a “friend of the show” to one on Vancouver Island — “You make us sound international!”)
I built myself a Web page that lets me click to their streams, as well as those of some other stations I’ve found. Convenient!
By afternoon, though, the fun shows go off the air and the stations switch to single DJs who don’t talk much. Good for the music, no help with combating loneliness.
Better than white noise
When the morning shows end, I might continue to listen to music or I might switch to plan B: background chatter. That is, ambient background sound that lets me concentrate. I gave up on plain ol’ rain effects once I found a cool site called myNoise. It’s got, like, hundreds of sounds you can combine into the background you want.
MyNoise (it’s free) lets you create a custom background, so I made one that’s a study hall: Chatting students, papers occasionally turning, footsteps, pens scratching — not very loud, but enough to feel like I’m in the environment. It even lets me have the volume randomly go up and down, so sometimes the virtual students are really chatty, but then they quiet down to a murmur for a while.
With noise-cancelling headphones or earbuds it’s really immersive, and it lets me concentrate on work while feeling like I’m in a room with other people.
I’m sure there are a lot of other ways to work alone and not be lonely — lots of Zoom calls, getting out to the store often, working in the library or coffee shop. But this works pretty well for me between conference calls and visits from the UPS guy.
