The transition into the new remote environment been both challenging as well as exciting.  When COVID-19 hit in March & we were asked to go home from our work, I was very anxious on what the next steps of the process would be.  This made it more complicated as due to COVID-19, we could not go out. So realistically speaking, we didn’t had much to do and our mind could not get involved in any other activities due to being so anxious. Social interaction with people we loved became big key challenge as earlier, whenever we wanted, we would go to their place to meet them. We now had to either call them or send them the whatsapp messages. More importantly, human are a social creature.  We all like to do things together. So we missed the social interaction not only with our immediate family but with our friends and extended family members.

However, the things that I don’t miss in COVID-19 is my commute time.  I now save approx. daily 3-4 hours of commute time to and from my work and close to $300 per month on travelling cost.  All this time and money that I am saving, while still getting the same work done and/or infact having increased productivity, I am able to do things that I always wanted to do but was not able to find time.  I am doing a lot of community work, developing new hobbies, learning new skills and more importantly spending more quality time with my family.
 

Some of the challenges that I face is internet bandwidth issues, social interaction with other family members, ergonomics issues while working from home, no structured breaks, frequent trips to the fridge, the feel of working in the office environment.  However, when I look at the positives of working from home and compare it with the challenges that I have, I feel very positive about working from home and am able to find solutions to the challenges mentioned above.