Did you find yourself, over these last fascinating and upsetting weeks, always on camera? Attending meetings and social gatherings, pitches and parties, over videoconference? Toasting into the void? I had to construct a little studio, building a tower of books and mounting lights on top to get the backdrop right. I hate the moment when you enter the call and it shows you all alone in your corner. In that instant I see only my lopsided jaw and splotchy nose, a meaty jug of disappointment, mirrored back at me. Then again it’s the only face on hand. You can’t order a new face on Amazon. You can’t even get a new webcam; everything is sold out.
Way before video calls, I was a freelancer, in a one-room apartment. I worked at home with a modem that shared a line with my phone. My work relationships always focused on doing a thing: writing the code, writing the copy, launching the website. Even though it was transactional, work was often intensely social; you’d make a lot of friends chatting, often for hours, about what you were doing. You’d have meetings in the park. You’d find other freelancers through word of mouth and hang out at their kitchen tables. It was random and satisfying. But at a certain point you’d need a little shelter, and health insurance if you could get it. So off to interviews and, hopefully, into the office you would go. Less fun but more stable.
This new working from home is not like that. We have dozens of software-as-a-service tools managing our calendars, running our meetings, helping us manage our code. I have my choice of multiplexing video chat tools and pay to use them. On Tuesday I teach a class to 16 graduate students, most of whom I’ve never met outside a square on the screen. On Wednesday I go into a virtual town hall with 50 or 60 wee square faces looking back at me. I talk too much because I need to fill the air. The faces blur in a way that makes me feel ashamed. How can I pretend to know these postage-stamp people? There are buttons for raising your hand and buttons for applause.
It’s awful. I’m too much at the center of my weird little world, alone with my thoughts and my USB microphone. And my calendar is full of these meetings. There’s no time for long conversations that stabilize the mind, that allow you to perceive the world as othe