I’m going on almost two straight years of remote working now. To be honest, things are remarkably similar to how it was when we were in the office. But, on reflection, those similarities are mostly surface-level. There are some pretty significant differences that I’ve only started becoming aware of.

I’ll start by saying that my experience has taught me that my environment has a remarkably potent effect on me. I’m one of those people who love going to a coffee shop to write, not because I want the caffeine buzz (I do, but I can get that at home), but because I want the larger atmosphere/aura/vibe of the coffee shop, of which a caffeine buzz is one constituent part. It’s hard to unpack that completely, and it probably wouldn’t make sense to: it’s the alchemy of the whole coffee shop experience together that makes it an ideal place for me to write.

Likewise, when I read, I prefer a library. The key component there seems to be quiet, but again, I can have the quiet at home. There’s a larger composite experience going on that probably involves being surrounded by books, by other people concentrated on their own reading, by high ceilings and large open spaces with hidden nooks, etc. 

There is nothing terribly surprising or unusual about my preferring to write in coffee shops and read in libraries. It’s hard to conclude anything other than the apparent reality that these environments are constitutionally well-suited for those activities. They have most likely gradually been formed as those kinds of places by people who have had shared intuitions about what would create certain kinds of atmospheres, conducive to certain kinds of activity.

The same goes for offices. Obviously, there have existed plenty of offices that have been negative environments for one reason or another, just like there have existed coffee shops and libraries that have been poorly designed environments. But, in general, offices have been designed as places for people to work, and have more or less been successful in being that.

The shift to remote work for people in jobs conducive for it (like mine) happened so suddenly and so completely in March 2020 that it immediately forced each of us to become designers of our own work environments, even though that function has been executed collectively and gradually in the cases of public spaces like coffee shops, libraries, and offices. Some people are adept at creating good spaces for themselves to work from home; others, like myself, are getting there much more slowly through a process of trial-and-error. 

So, while work has mostly continued apace in the shift to remote work, there are some lurking effects at the mental/emotional/spiritual level that I think are still being fleshed out. To make sense of this, I’ve sought out some resources to enter into dialogue with on various areas that I think are going to become more of a focus in the near future with remote work.

1. Communication. Email has been a significant part of every white-collar worker’s life for years now. But, with remote work, it’s gone from a vital tool of communication to essentially the way to communicate. This isn’t just annoying; it’s also seriously detrimental to our productivity, focus, and even our mental health. An expert in “deep work,” Cal Newport, has talked at great length about how the constant pinging of our inboxes disrupts our consciousness in ways that essentially make our best creativity, which requires uninterrupted focus, impossible to access. But now, with remote work, we’re in a situation where we simply can’t turn the emails off, because they’re essential in even just communicating with our coworkers, who used to be down the hall.
   
   
2. Isolation. The constant influx of emails doesn’t even have the upside of lessening our loneliness. For that, we need meaningful interactions, which are simply more likely to happen in a shared physical setting, where we can linger in each other’s office doorways and together in shared spaces. This is an especially detrimental for introverts (such as myself), who can easily trick themselves into thinking that they don’t need these interactions—when, in fact, of course they do. Susan Cain, author of the book Quiet, has written about ways for those in positions of leadership to counteract the effects of isolation, especially when introverts are involved. Cain’s advice is good, but it’s just simply harder to be intentional about fostering meaningful social interactions in a work-from-home situation.
   
   
3. Clutter. Let’s face it: we can get away with more at home. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. Messes that we’re comfortable with can still be having a negative effect on our workspaces, even though we’re not noticing them because of a lack of self-consciousness. And, worse, there are other forms of clutter, as Joshua Fields Millburn, one half of “The Minimalists,” points out in their work. When we’re using physical spaces for work that are also used for other functions during non-work hours, clutter is that much more likely. Dedicated workspaces can be created at home, but it’s not always an option. The effects are wide-ranging: not only is work harder, but it’s less satisfying.
   
   
4. Overload. It’s harder to regulate yourself when you’re on an island. For some people, this means working less. For others, it means working more—often without even realizing it, as the beginnings and ends of our working hours become blurred with our work computer sitting right there at the kitchen table at all hours. The good news is that remote work also allows for the antidote to this problem, if we’re willing to be deliberate, as Cal Newport points out when he talks about intentionally slowing down and working at a capacity less than what we could theoretically handle. The result is less burnout and a healthier relationship with work.
   
   
5. Routine. Similar to the issue above, I’ve found that without structure to my days, I swing wildly between underfunctioning and overfunctioning. One of my favorite teacher mentor bloggers from my days in the classroom recommends establishing routines as a way to overcome this irregularity and ensure that you’re taking care of things that matter to you on a regular basis. I’ve noticed it’s also comforting to, say, start the day with an hour of reading with my mug of coffee. Lately, I’ve also been trying to work in some personal writing time in the afternoon. Notice that these routines have less to do with accomplishing work things and more to do with re-humanizing me as I work, sometimes robot-like, through my daily work tasks.

To be clear, I fully support remote work where possible in the context of a global pandemic. We need to make sacrifices for the sake of one another’s health and safety. And there are definite upsides to work-from-home, to the extent that I’d never want to go back to full-time in-person work. But we have to be honest about some of its differences and detriments too.

The good news is that, once we face these realities, we can counteract these with intentional choices and habits. That’s where I’m at now: trying to take stock of my situation and doing what I can to re-establish the balance that was previously provided for us. 

A number of my coworkers — myself included, to an extent — are recovering fundamentalists of some kind or another (exvangelicals, as those who emerged from the evangelical movement sometimes call themselves). Those who break free of some kind of fundamentalism tend to have a continuing leftward trajectory after their departure, in terms of their religious and political ideologies. Which makes perfect sense — if they were part of a right-wing movement that damaged themselves and others, they’d be naturally inclined to move the other direction.

One interesting exception to this trend though is that there is often some vestigial posture of fundamentalism that remains. In the world of publishing, this often manifests itself in my coworkers’ approach to grammar and other issues of style and usage.

Let me be clear: I’d take this kind of fundamentalism over the religious kind any day. I’m less bothered by it than fascinated and a little amused by it. It affects me a bit as a copywriter, but I mostly get to be a spectator as they debate whether the the before New York Times should be capitalized and italicized along with the rest of the title, or whether a distributive adjective is making a sentence too ambiguous or not. 

Rather than citing verses of the Bible, they cite rules from the Chicago Manual of Style. Rather than drawing fiery inspiration from the prophecies of Isaiah, they speak reverently of the words of Benjamin Dreyer from some chapter of Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (a subtitle which I know is supposed to be taken tongue-in-cheekly but which I’m positive a few of my coworkers read in total earnest). And rather than using precepts of church doctrine to show whether a certain kind of behavior is or isn’t normative and acceptable, they share charts from Google Ngram to show whether a phrase is or isn’t “idiomatic.”

Is there a place for this sort of approach to writing? For sure. There are some things that are incorrect without any good reason for being so, and in those cases, it helps to have people who can spot the error and suggest a change. Particular contexts require particular conventions. But there’s a certain point where the conventions become no longer a means to an end (the end in question here being clarity and impact) but the end in and of itself. This despite the fact that the rules are all made up anyway — and will continue to be made up. (Someday, there will be an 18th edition of CMOS that will redefine what those who adhere to it consider “correct.”)

I’m not a psychologist, so I won’t go too much further. But it sure seems like some people have a need for something in their lives to be above reproach. A set of guidelines etched onto tablets by something other than a human hand. I know from experience that when you orient your entire life around something you consider to be inerrant truth, and then you find that it is anything but, it’s terrifying. There is suddenly a lack of order and meaning to the world around you. The temptation to plug that gaping hole with something, anything at all — even the rules of grammar — is immense. 

I work at a publishing company in West Michigan — for their sake and mine, I’ll keep them anonymous and refer to them as “the Press” — that publishes works by authors who write from an ideological background (usually Christianity) that is not my own. Being a copywriter, my job is specifically to engage with the books we’re publishing on a deep enough level that I’m able to write about them with a high degree of accuracy and understanding — and also sympathy. It wouldn’t be very good copy if I sounded like I was trying to distance myself from what the author is doing in her book. In fact, it’s not even enough to simply cosign on her arguments. I have to sound like the book is brilliant and groundbreaking and vital, without using those words or any other nakedly evaluative language. (That’s the endorsers’ and reviewers’ jobs.)

On the face of it, this might sound like a dicey career situation to be in and one that is terrible for fostering any sense of integrity. But I’ve been in this job for about two and a half years now, and I can honestly say that I’m not encumbered by any sense of nagging guilt or a sick feeling of having sold out and compromised my values. And I’m someone who has felt both of those things at numerous times throughout my life — so I’m confident it’s not for lack of self-examination. So I thought I’d reflect on a few aspects of what makes being a nonbelieving copywriter at a publishing house that frequently publishes confessional titles not only palatable, but even enjoyable and gratifying.

• The Press is a relatively small, independent company that has not been bought up by one of the big publishing juggernauts and turned into a thinly disguised imprint. Of course, profit is one of its raisons d’être, but the very fact of its having remained independent all this time despite lucrative offers for purchase by one of the Big Five speaks to its valuing its independence of perspective.
  
  
• There’s a clear sense that the Press is ideologically consistent and trustworthy. It’s not that we produce titles all from a certain perspective — we don’t. But there are clear criteria for a book being something we’re interested in and boundaries around what we’re not interested in. Most importantly, we’re not in the business of working with authors on any projects that are right-wing, nationalistic, conspiratorial, uncritical about systemic injustices, or using religion as a mask for bigotry. I can trust that I will never have to write copy for a book that tries to portray the 45th president of the United States as a savior of anything, or that uses dog-whistle language like “religious freedom” or “family values” to describe patriarchal, white-supremacist norms. (In fact, we regularly publish books that call out and expose these kinds of things in various areas of society.) It’s not that we have a perfect record — I know we have published problematic things. But there is a critical approach to what we put out and a concerted effort for integrity of vision.
  
  
• I don’t have to hide the fact that I’m nonreligious in the workplace. And I have several coworkers who are also nonreligious. An organization’s mission statement starts within its own walls, so this is important. Again, the Press isn’t perfect — it’s relative lack of diversity is a testament to shortcomings in its efforts to be truly inclusive. Nevertheless, it is clear that a person’s professional contributions are what is valued — not some litmus test about their identity or views.
  
  
• I do have my own background in the Christian tradition, and so I’m especially sympathetic to its aims and commitments — even as I have found them insufficient for myself. It would be dishonest to claim that Christianity was nothing but destructive in my life. It was that, but it was also formative. I respect that others might find it more the latter than the former, and I respect and value efforts to try to reform a faith to make it more like that for others.
  
  
• I’ve found embodying perspectives other than my own — again, within certain important boundaries — undeniably valuable. If this is exactly how I came to the realization back in my early adulthood that Christianity wasn’t for me, I’d be dishonest to say that growth can’t come the other way too — especially when it’s from certain traditions or backgrounds I’m less familiar with. I’ve found that alternate frameworks of thinking and living create space for things that I eventually come to appreciate.

Still, even with these points of justification, there are times I don’t especially enjoy, say, writing about why it’s important to justify and defend the doctrine of inseparable operations — that any action of one person of the holy trinity is undertaken also by the other two persons of the trinity — so that someone in an armchair somewhere can feel reassured that they are indeed a monotheist and not a heathen tritheist.

It would be ideal, of course, if I could work for a publisher whose worldview aligned more closely with mine. But that opportunity will likely not present itself in West Michigan anytime soon. I don’t feel the need to rationalize, though, because I find that my work reinforces something important in me: I’ll call it ideological humility. It’s the spirit I hope to be met with by those who hold different worldviews than mine, but it’s a spirit I too often fail to embody toward others. Being integrally engaged with other belief systems 40 hours a week forces this virtue upon me for at least that time — making it just the slightest bit easier to find that mindset when I need it outside the hours of eight to five, Monday through Friday.