If there was a silver lining from the Covid-19 situation, it was the acceleration of the global adoption of "working from home". Of course not for every industry, but ones which primarily involve working in software in front of computers most of the day.
Being a sporadic documentary filmmaker requires a lot of travel, shooting, but then sitting in front of computers, primarily at home. While at the time of this recording we've made a few near feature length films, all of which have been financially successful, the amount of money they take to make has to date been small, so the prophets off such, while having brought in more that they took to make, still have not made us a living wage. As making money exclusively off being a documentary filmmaker is like trying to make a living off being a classical musician, or artist, or journalist - Meaning a struggle. Since it's extremely difficult in general to make a living off one's creativity, the classic saying is "don't quit your day job". That being said, our main day job for the last couple decades, which we freelance in sporadically and thus do quit on occasion, has been in various post-production roles which stretch across Hollywood and sometimes the commercial industry, the game cinematic industries, and the virtual and augmented reality industries. So we use a smaller percentage of our skillset on other projects in those contexts, and as a result derive most of our income from them.
We started this day job career when we were 19 years old in the Bay Area, then spent time working in San Francisco, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Toronto, and even some time in Wellington New Zealand and Sidney Australia. So outside of the US which told the monarchy to go screw themselves, we also lived internationally in other English speaking countries which stayed more loyal to the crown and have film industries. Our wife is a physician, and we actually moved to Los Angeles not for my work but for her's, as that's where she got her residency. When our daughter was born we decided to move back to the Bay Area to my home city so she could grow up in a great place and also go to the same good schools which I went to. My parents, while far from perfect and each have their issues, as we all do, they are very supportive, honorable, and we're eternally grateful to them for their many positive traits. Being an only child, with two aging parents, who we wanted to return the favor to for raising us well, we wanted to be more around them as they got older. Since they live in a very desirable area and were also amazingly willing to turn over their cluttered small hippy house to their son and his family... my wife and I spent the money we would be using for buying a home into building what's called an ADU in the United States, meaning "Additional Dwelling Unit", or second smaller house in the backyard. Due to the lack of housing combined with available and rather unused backyards, ADU's are becoming wildly desired for those who can afford them and state and municipal areas are now incentivizing them to help the housing crunch. After the ADU was built for my folks, my wife and I would be taking over inheriting the house I grew up in, and heavily rebooting it. That way my aging parents could get free senior care, my wife and I could get free babysitting, a more cost effective place to live in a very desirable and thus expensive area, and we could all get more for our money in terms of the place we live. Transmuting an overgrown, cluttered, crazy cat lady house, with a lot of hodge podge into one of the nicest and most hip minimalist modern farmhouses in the town.
The "living on your own & having your own 30 year mortgage" thing is a relatively new quote on quote "American Dream" invention. Ask a third world person, indigenous person, or even an Amish person if they spend 30 years and sometimes 40 years (barf) paying off a fancy modern farmhouse home with all the prestige and technology (including indoor plumbing), plus bells & whistles inside and they'll look at you like you are nuts. They will very much instead do the thing humans have done for thousands of years + and settle for a lower standard of living, which does not necessarily equate to lower quality of life, by living in a thatch house, yurt, hut, hobbit hole, wig womb, shanty cinder block structure, tiny house, ice cave and/or igloo, barn, tent, small cabin, treehouse, etc... and they will tell you if they need any of the above built, they will have others from their tribe or community help them physically build them then and there. Then they are done. Boom.
In terms of the costs associated with modern (and usually very expensive) home ownership, one way to cut that down has been to go back to multi-generation living. Asian cultures have long ago figured this out, with the grandparents often living with the parents for example. But living all under one roof can get challenging. After the 2008 crash, our mother in law once had 11 relatives living in her not very large house, and permanent family relationship damage resulted. With everyone being just too on top of one another for far too long. No fourty some year old still wants to see their seventy some year old parents every day let alone have them involved with every conversation around the breakfast nook. Since the Heckman family didn't grow up with any religious indoctrination and as a result believe in birth control and as a result is not that large, it's not that hard for us with five people on the property, and two dogs, and some cats, to get along decently enough within a modest sized area. But the key to that has been giving everyone their own space. We've accomplished that via a family compound with multiple structures. That now has not only two separate houses on the property, but two separate houses with another structure, a little 120 square foot office shed which my dad and I share which is our home office personal desk workspaces. So the stars aligned and the puzzle pieces came into place nicely allowing all of us to now live in harmony. Yeah!
Upon moving back to this home, which was just prior to Covid 19 hitting the shit fan in 2019, we, having spent a great deal of time on movie sets, as well as commuting to various production companies and post production facilities, which are often in "tec'y" or "office park'y" areas, had next to zero idea what we we're going to do day job wise from this location which could be considered "rural suburban" and thus a distant commute from any specific facility we had been associated with in the past for work. Basically our industries are not located here, at all. But as Covid made large amounts of people needing to be in the same room a potential health risk, our day job industry transformed into one that can be mainly accomplished primarily working from home. So to this day, we occasionally will be slammed working a day job gig, from an office shed at our childhood home, by remote accessing various networks with various post production facilities we've been associated with over the previous years. Like for many, this has been truly life-changing for us. As we absolutely despise sitting in bad traffic and absolutely adore working from home.
Sure there are times where it's beneficial to be at a physical office, such as for client interactions, networking, or spontaneous interactions or cold intros. But those serendipitous conversations that spark great ideas, and the collaboration that flows magically when employees are all in the room together are rare exception to what are instead the majority of the time colleagues who are socially inept desk trolls that rarely interact with the new person that sits down a few screens over from them. As distraction often outweighs physical proximity benefit, the vast majority of computer work, and basic work interactions for non social purposes, can be done from your own location accessing a company's network remotely. An article from an Australian news publication by doctor Libby Sandar which helped inspire this essay says "It’s hard to feel inspired or creative in a noisy open-plan office with rows of the same desks and chairs. Background noise, noisy co-workers, loud telephone conversations, impromptu stand-up meetings in the middle of the office and interruptions make it very difficult to conduct work that requires concentrated effort."
There is a psychological corollary to the physical workplace, having your own, unique, and loved personal workspace is crucial for several reasons. For comfort, privacy, organization, creativity, not to mention customizability. We are a big fan of desk home office design ideas, blogs, images, and videos so we've taken great care in setting up our home office. Which can be seen from the video versions of our shorter than essay insights podcast updates by the way. Since physical environments influence our psychological and physical states, having a beautiful and custom space that is your own, one which is individualized, can have a massive effect on your own sense of professionalism. All of which are able to be taken further in your home environment then they would be at an office location in which the majority of your work components are not your own personal gear. Because as Sandar says, "Where we work must enable experiences that match the state required for the work. A library can provide a sense of order, structure and focus by acting as a cognitive scaffold. At other times, a lively cafe space may be the perfect backdrop for emotional contagion and collaboration among a team. But in addition to focusing on the physical workplace, additional concentration should be on the underlying work state we are trying to achieve. The effect of our spaces on our physical and psychological states is more profound than we realize."
"The most important reactions we need from our workplaces are focus (a cognitive response allowing us to think and concentrate to complete our work), a sense of beauty (an emotional response, an essential, constitutive element of organizations which has important implications in organization theory), and connectedness (a relational response that involves the extent to which the environment facilitates a sense of community and a feeling of belonging to the organization). We need all three, but not at the same time. And not in the same place." Aside from the noise of most modern offices, another reason we often struggle to maintain energy or inspiration is that the uniformity, repetitiveness, and non-customization are very boring to our senses. At a psychological level, we are biologically disposed to seek out locations where there is some complexity, some interest, and where messages are conveyed in different ways. Such spaces evoke awe and a sense of beauty, fundamental human needs, and important precursors to positive mood, creativity, wellbeing and trust formation in organizations. A preference for beautiful environments plays a role in attracting people to restorative environments and retaining them for a longer time than would otherwise be the case, allowing them to recover from attentional fatigue and stress. It’s no wonder we don’t feel good among acres of gray carpet, computer screens and melamine." We personally got so tired in past years having to sit in undesirable cubicles or shared desk spaces that had non-ideal conditions, without fully adequate gear, and far too many distractions. Any sort of communal keyboards and mice are also not clean and thus notorious breeding grounds for bacteria by the way. Here's looking at your public library internet access station which gets nearly the same amount of hands on them as bus handles or gas station pump handles. Many times working in an office we'd ask ourselves "what's the point in all being physically crammed in next to one another when asked to be not that social and insteal mainly worker drones?" One facility we worked at in Venice California had such a terrible seating configuration, when our wife came to visit she was shocked at what a zero privacy sardine can it looked like. With employees at their desks in a straight line not quite but almost elbow to elbow, in what felt like a urinal row with no privacy dividers. And in other parts of the world, IE sweatshops, it's way worse. We do not miss that one iota, yet various company owners do.
Post Covid having wound down, some companies have given top down directives to return to their physical offices. A certain aspergers Godzillionaire who runs numerous companies who shall remain nameless has been quoted as saying "working from home is morally wrong" so F him and the push to get everyone back into the office is secretly being driven by two factors, neither of which is publicly spoken about up front because it only benefits people like him - sith lords, Robber Barons, CEO's, and various masters of industry & boards of directors, which are usually composed of weasels who own commercial real estate. The first one is concern about commercial property values. The second is a peculiar harking back by some managers to a 1950s puritanical regressive ultra-conservative "Theory X" approach which assumes that all workers are lazy and must be watched at all times with needing to be directed and controlled in order to maximize work efficiency which is the opposite of the truth. The number of managers and organizations who are still invested in outdated command and control approaches like this is still, unfortunately, significant.
Theory X only applies if people feel systemically underappreciated. Motivated professional workers, especially those who are well compensated, want to do a good job and add value to a company and can do so even more through the increased efficiency of working remotely from a personal individualized space. Productivity wise, not having to commute for example inherently saves each worker their personal time per day. Which is priceless. Being able to break up your day, do laundry, run errands, pick your little person or people up from school, leave early and perhaps hop back on later in the evening if needed, all create such wonderful flexibility. So the motivated worker is incentivized to get their daily or weekly work accomplished even more efficiently than in a dynamic where they must be physically present in their seat for show purposes until a specific time of the day. When that goes out the window because short of remote meetings, employees don't need to be physically seen, they can work from their underpants if they so choose and and what ultimately matters most is the results of the work itself. However they get that done remotely under their own time in their own personal workspace. Working for hire or as a launching point for their personal muse to get creative on their own time.