His:
There was no one to talk to but her. The office at home used to feel huge, so he’d filled it with boxes of round-to-its and when-I-get-time-to-do-its, the clutter of a life lived outside of the home in an office kept pristine with plenty of chairs and tables for interaction, spreading out drawings, plans, spreadsheets. All those endless meetings he’d complained about that were the fuel that fired his imagination, his problem solving ability on overdrive. Without someone to bounce ideas off, to lean over their shoulder and point out an error or the right answer, it wasn’t the same. He was now trapped behind the desk, his face shoved into the computer monitor’s camera, trying to recreate the personal experience through online cameras, conference calls, and the phone. His biggest adventure was removing all the clutter on the wall behind him, and putting some of the boxes of whatevers and need-to-deal-withs on the floor out of view in the background of the web cam. Woop. Without the two hours of commute every day, he now had to fill those hours with something. What? How would he survive.
Hers:
Having spent the past 5 years immersed in virtual reality, the phone, email, and social media requests for her expertise were flooding the digital airwaves. She couldn’t remember the last time she was this busy. Endless meetings. six am to 8pm, non stop online meetings, Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and even in Engage, AltspaceVr, Second Life, the list of virtual spaces was long. She was jealous of all the people with extra time. She dreamed of taking a few minutes to read her book abandoned by the side of the bed, her knitting next to her chair in the living room where her cup of tea poured 3 weeks ago turning moldy on the surface of the butterscotch liquid surface.
Lorelle Writes 