I Wish We Were Talking About the Beer -Jill Johnson

March of this year (2020) is probably one of the strangest months in most of our memories. The world this month looks more akin to a blockbuster drama than real life. Earlier on the year, corona virus seemed far away, and unreal. By March however, the virus was not only real, but it had put me on a plane home to the United States from Brussels. The virus disrupted our workspace in a major way. Luckily, after I returned to the United States, I was able to continue my work with g4g. It wasn’t until I returned home that I felt the effects on communication from corona virus.

After a two-week hiatus for quarantine I returned to work to find a very different working environment to what I was used to. In Belgium, a lockdown had ensued, and everyone was now working from home just as I was. The most glaring difference was the feeling on being cut off. In order to communicate with my coworkers, I now had to create an email chain. Answers were delayed, and coworking became a tedious in inefficient task. When in the Atelier in Brussels, our team all sat around the same table and could constantly bounce questions, ask for help, and brainstorm for ideas together. Once the quarantine had taken effect, the days of coworking seemed to be over.

Another change became the time difference. Conference calls were now happening at four in the morning my time. I was playing catch up. This was probably the biggest hurdle to overcome in returning to work. Delays have been common, we are still figuring things out, but the work goes on. The separation has put our communication to the test, can we maintain a normal productive working schedule from the comfort of our own homes? In many ways this is more challenging, home is distracting. Families, pets, the comfort of home breeds distractions that make it that much harder to get work done.

Enter, the zoom call. The proverbial savior of workers in quarantine. Zoom conferences have made all the difference in recreating some kind of normal working environment. Face to face connection is always better than an email. In my case, it is always more productive. Since returning to a lockdown the ability to see anyone outside of my family has been a rare (and sometimes welcome) sight. Working in real time, asking questions, conversating on the issues we are all facing in our attempts to move forward has given back in some small way the coworking habitat that characterized my internship those first few months in Brussels.

There is no doubt that we cannot replace the in-person experience with a video call. In the long-term, the world is not meant to function in isolation. We are a social species at our core. While this is undeniably the internet generation, I would not argue we are meant to be entirely online. I have found that I miss dearly meeting people, I crave interaction, in-person. Feeding off the creative energy in the Atelier as ideas for new workshops are thrown around. Being inspired by seeing the difference we are making in girls’ lives. I hope from this unique situation we -society- can place more emphasis on working together, and simply being together too.