What do you do for work?
On living in the woods and working in the cloud
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
The Writing Life by Annie Dillard
We live around the corner from the Gualala river.
In the seasons when the river is high enough, my husband and I will go kayaking through the redwoods, the dog in front, paddles in hand, binoculars around our necks.
Once, we returned from a paddle and pulled up on the small pebbly beach at the same time as an older couple. We chatted as we carried our kayaks back to the car.
We ask how they ended up here. They asked how we ended up here. We told each other, “we drove through one day and never left.” There are always variations on the story, but it’s the most common answer.
They said, we knew we wanted to live here, and found jobs that would let us do that. The wife was a teacher, the husband a general contractor. Richard Scarry-esque jobs that make a town run.
They asked, what do you all do up here?
My husband at I glanced at each other, trying to figure out who would go first.
We’re self-conscious about being remote workers who moved to a small town in the pandemic.
Both of us have jobs that are kind of hard to explain. I’m not sure whose company “About Us” is harder to decipher.
Those sentences aren’t wrong, but they don’t really capture what we actually do most of the time: sit in front of a screen.
From 9am-6pm, I use a lot of apps. I have a very short commute to a very vast digital world, built by Slack, Google, Figma, and Zoom.
My body is 99% sedentary while my eyes dart around the screen. My mind catches up from the meeting that ended 12 seconds ago, while my hands and voice participate in two different conversations at the same time.
There is a perpetual backlog of messages, emails, notifications, windows, tabs—digital clutter, only to be swept away when my computer shuts itself down after not being restarted for 172 days.
For much of the day, I watch a version of myself lead video calls—a high-tech, two-way mirror.
To look someone in the eye, I have to look away from their eyes. People’s faces are in little boxes on my screen, but the camera is up at the top of my monitor. I squint and peer into the camera, a little black dot, and nod. I try to transmit how deeply I’m listening, how closely I’m paying attention.
This is how you build relationships through virtual meetings. It’s a little dystopian, but I’m used to it by now.
At the end of the day, I close my computer. The digital clutter continues to pile up, but I am no longer in the office.
Somehow, despite sitting for 95% of the day, I am tired. I think to myself, “what have I even done?”
I take a deep breath and look out into the woods.
What happens when a consultant works all day in the forest and no one is there to hear it?
Does anything I did today matter? Did I drive businesses forward? Did I build what’s next?
Does it matter to these trees, to my neighbors, to my community?
Does anyone within 100 miles of me care?
Right out of college, I worked at a media and consumer research firm that employed tens of thousands of people globally.
One day, I attended a “Lunch n Learn” for new hires hosted by the leader of North America, who would soon become the CEO.
When he finished his talk, he asked if anyone had any questions for him. With equal parts curiosity, confidence, and complete naiveté, I raised my hand.
“Do you think we do anything good for the world?”
He smiled, a little amused, but took the question seriously. He shared a story about how one time, when he was early in his own career—a lowly analyst—he was in charge of forecasting sales for a new product.
Those forecasts would determine how many factories to open, how many people to hire, how much to pay those people. If he was wrong, those factories might have to close and those people might have to be let go.
There were real implications to this work. It mattered.
Okay, I thought. That’s good enough for now.
I could draw a line, however winding, from my little cubicle to some kind of greater meaning.
Because it’s important, right? For work to have meaning.
Right?
Here are a few skills on my LinkedIn profile: Strategic partnerships. Change management.
I’ve spent over a decade building seemingly valuable skills to attain seemingly meaningful work.
Living in a rural area has made me question what “valuable” and “meaningful” really mean.
Valuable to who? Meaningful in what world?
Valuable to the knowledge economy, meaningful in a world that exists mostly online?
Here are a few skills not on my LinkedIn profile: How to fix a water heater. How to filet a fish.
Shortly after we moved, I became starkly aware of the many, many skills I have yet to build.
Let’s just say, in fire season in fire country, fire management feels a lot more valuable than change management.
I actually do believe my work is valuable. I get to help schools and companies think creatively about their problems. I get to work with talented, curious people. We’ve done some things that have had a real impact on people’s lives.
But if all of my work is done remotely, what meaning does my work have here?
My friend recently wrote a book called The Good Enough Job.
It’s an exploration of how our generation came to associate work with identity a la follow your passion, do what you love.
Throughout, he pushes the reader to question whether one’s life’s meaning should really be derived from work.
The whole time he was writing it, I would pester him—so, what’s the answer!? Does work need to have meaning or not!? I kind of need to know ASAP.
Of course, it’s not so binary. We spend a lot of time at work. Most of us need to work to live. It’s nice to not be miserable at work. But work is only one part of our lives.
Through the lens of the Good Enough Job, maybe it’s not so bad to have a job that is mostly invisible to everyone around me.
Maybe it’s good for my work to exist on my computer and not as much IRL. Maybe supporting my life is meaning enough.
Maybe work is something I do, not who I am.
Maybe remote work isn’t a scourge on the small town I live in, just another way to make a living.
Remote work has mostly been an incredible gift to me. Decoupling where I live from where I work has cracked open entire futures I never thought possible.
It is a great privilege.
But I have to be honest. I’m also going a little nutty.
I wake up, catch up, try to keep up, and never really log off.
I find nothing more healing than chopping vegetables or kneading dough or plucking blackberries directly from the bush. I crave things I can touch, smell, and taste, senses you can’t experience through a computer (yet).
I sew and mend by hand. When the needle pricks my finger, I remember I have a body, not just a brain.
I daydream about working at a bookstore—being able to page through novels, hand someone a physical item, and look a customer in the eye.
I refuse to do any kind of extracurricular activity over Zoom, no matter how healing or creative—not meditation, not yoga, not poetry class.
I work all day, interact with tons of people, and achieve my organizational goals, but I often feel disconnected from any kind of tangible output, much less impact or meaning.
I can’t complain, but I do question if spending my days online is how I want to spend my life.
Standing in front of our car by the river, my husband and I eventually wrapped up the slightly-too-long explanations of our jobs. We smiled awkwardly, unsure how the older couple would respond.
Somewhat to our surprise, they nodded and said, “That’s amazing. We never had that option, but it’s great that you can find different kinds of work and still be able to live here.”
In fact, they told us their daughter was around our age, and we should meet her. I asked if she had Facebook or Instagram, if they knew her username.
They said no, but she manages the email for the general contracting business. He wrote down an MSN email address on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.
I still have the piece of paper in my wallet. Time passed. I found the daughter’s name on the internet and even read an old article about a dance troupe she was a part of in 2016.
I never reached out. I’m not sure we’ll ever meet in person.
If we do, she’ll probably ask what I do up here, too.
What do I do here?
This time, I’ll keep it simple. I work remotely.
That’s how I make a living, but first, let me tell you about my life.
"Decoupling where I live from where I work has cracked open entire futures I never thought possible."
Love this concept, so much to consider and think through. Love reading your posts - I hope they coalesce into perhaps a memoir? :)
Love your writing. Please keep the posts coming :)