The end of civilization? Not quite.
Almost 2000 postings into this blog over the last 9+ years and right now one of the foundations that has allowed me to pursue this interesting activity is about to end for a while. That is, my lunch hours. I didn’t plan on blogging. I always thought that I would have time better spent doing other things. Things I had to do, like housework. or things I would rather do nothing else than, like making the CDs I want to make. But when commenting on my friend Ron’s music blog during lunch time at my desk, having eaten, I realized that this was my perfect hour to do anything I wanted. I was at my desk, not at home. I could browse the internet or read a book, but after leaving comments 2-3x the size of some of Ron’s posts, I realized that I was already blogging during my lunch hour. Why nor make it official? So in the summer of 2010, I did. And we’re still here.
The sanctity of my lunch hour is often compromised. If I have to re-arrange my work schedule for any reason, often it will be sacrificed to meet my 40 hours a week. I have to make trips to mail any music that sells in my discogs store, and that cuts my time sharply. Then I’m often just too busy to take a lunch hour at all. There’s vacation and travel. If I have the time, I try to re-run an older posting but don’t always do that. And there’s days when I’m snowed in at home and can’t come to work. You get the picture. That’s why out of 52 weeks a year to blog, five days a week [which would be 260 posts] we manage to get around 200 a year here at PPM. We’re only human.
But as of tomorrow, I’m on Stay Home status in my county. I won’t be coming to work for two weeks. I will be trying to work from home during that time, but will it be an hour taken for lunch every day? Probably not. It’s pretty much up in the air right now. Being at home changes everything. I will have many other things I could be doing. Besides, my work is such that I rarely take a lunch hour at the same time every day, owing to pressing needs by my co-workers and the demanding owner of the company. So what I’m trying to say is that I may not be blogging very much in the immediate future. I may schedule old posts that never got sufficient love in the earlier years of PPM. We’ll see. I hate to make any promises since things are so disrupted right now. It’s not like I’ve been a beacon of stable posting in the last two weeks in any case. I was furiously trying to get ready for the UK trip that ultimately didn’t happen and now my daily schedule is getting a major disruption. At the very least I hope to run some redux posts.
– 30 –
Post-Punk Monk 
No worries PPM, we all have lives and at this time there are more pressing things. I love your contributions over on my blog, the detailed and witty insights. You take care.
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jdjedredy – Well, your taste in posting is reasonably well aligned with mine. A quarter of it is stuff I have, with another querter being stuff I still want so how can I not weigh in? I really enjoy your blog even though I don’t download anything.
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Bummer. However, since I’m a pretty new follower of your blog, I’ll enjoy any redux posts greatly!
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desertcurmudgeon – I’ll try to keep it going since my 90 minutes of commute is now tabled as a net gain in free time. But if I miss a post, do try the RANDOM POST button like Ade.W mentioned. With nearly 2K posts it can keep you entertained [?] for days.
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I can’t deny it, I will miss your posts!
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SimonH – Uh, so will I. It’s fun writing about music.
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HI Please try to keep them coming! If you can replicate your routines you will be all the happier for it
Also did not know you had a Discogs store!
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cary berger – Hey! Long time no see! We’ll see how it all goes down. Cross your fingers! What part of the animated “Buy The Monk’s Records” button in the right sidebar under “Discogs Store” did you find difficult to parse? Just saying… At any rate, I took the store down before the UK trip that didn’t happen and I’ll keep it that way until trips to the Post Office become viable again.
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I’ve done WFH quite a bit in the past, and now that my company is enforcing it for 100% of the work force let me share some advice. The most important thing is STICK TO YOUR REGULAR SCHEDULE. Get up at the same time. Shower, wear clothes like you’d wear to the office. Take regular breaks. Take the full lunch hour that you’d take if you were at the office. You get the idea. Routines are important and just because the location you’re in is different, the routine should stay the same as much as possible.
Good luck, stay safe and healthy!
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jsd – If I work from home it’s usually a snow day [or two] and that is atylical but brief. I’ll try for normality tomorrow.
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Not to worry, I like the old stuff anyway, the G.P.A’s are always good to back over and the Random Post button is a joy. Strange days.
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Ade.W – I look back at the first few Rock G.P.A.s and they were unbelievably scanty compared to the long winded epics that were to come! I am embarrassed by the Icehouse and [early] Duran Duran ones. I could wring a few weeks out of them at my current standard. Yeah, I was thrilled when I figured out how easy the random post button turned out to be. I’m glad to hear that someone besides myself uses it. And yes; that does imply that I re-read my own blog for fun. It’s true…
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life is topsy-turvy for most of us. totally understand your new situation, altho i will echo others here who are saying you should try to stick to a routine for minimum disruption to productivity and to your own life (and sanity!!). God knows its been difficult for me to adjust, so i’m really not one to preach. Figure things out, and if you can blog at all it’ll be a bonus for people like me struggling to find some normalcy in truly abnormal times.
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Taffy – Well, everyone has weighed in and told me otherwise, including my spouse, so we’ll see what happenes tomorrow…Same Monk-Time! Same Monk-URL!!
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A New Reality, A Temporary Reality. We all need to do what we need to do. Good things are worth the wait and all the postings on PPM are good, great, and worth the patience of all of us.
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Hi Monk. I make a point of checking your site everyday to see if there is a new post from you. Sure sometimes you may post about a band I’m not interested in or haven’t heard of but I always make a point of reading them. I love your enthusiasm and knowledge of your subject matter. So visiting your site is now part of my daily routine. I will miss your regular posts but some things are more important. I hope you and your wife stay safe and healthy and will see any posts you manage to write as a bonus.
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Andy B – I am working remotely and just ate lunch on my deck with my wife. She suggested that I use the time not spent commuting home to blog so watch this space around 5-6 PM EST. Just saying!
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As someone who has mostly worked from home — until the last year and a bit, and even then I do a fair bit of it from home — I beg to (slightly) differ with the WFH sages above. Develop a routine and stick with it, but not necessarily the same one you had at your office, since you are not at your office and the environment is thus very different.
The sagacious Mrs. Monk has the right idea: a regular time for blogging, but not the same one as before. When I went from working in office environments to working from home (quite a long time ago now), I noticed immediately how much more productive I was since I didn’t have nearly as many “interruptions” from co-workers/bosses and no phone calls or other out-of-my-control environmental factors. I’ll freely admit it took a while to develop a solid routine, but once I did I really found myself achieving and exceeding both my employer’s goals for me and my own. That extra time saved by not having to deal with an uncontrolled environment allowed for some “think time” that also made the quality of the work go up.
It’s tempting to slack off when WFH but you pay a price for that later. This is a rare opportunity to allocate time for different priorities based on your own needs, not those of others. As long as the work you must do is done, you’ll quickly find the rhythm (divine) that works best for you.
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