How to look better than ever while working from home.

How are you? Since we're now nearly six months into this lousy scourge, I thought I'd check in again. Hope you and yours are doing okay. 

We're often told how important it is for our overall well-being to stay positive, to find rays of light that pierce the darkness. And I really do try. It's just that, things are so tough for so many people and for so many different reasons, even a brilliant Pacific Northwest summer day can periodically seem engulfed in a carrot-hued haze of anxiety. 

I feel incredibly lucky to have a job right now (insert sound of knuckles raking against splintered mahogany). In addition to its being a reliable source of income, mine is an occupation that doesn't require me to place my health on the line, every single GD day. While I work in close proximity to PSDs, JPEGs and HTML files, none have coughed or sneezed in my face, even once. It's a setting that stands in stark contrast to my wife's line of work. She's an elementary school teacher, a vocation that's experienced more shape shifts than a gob of yellow hair in the prop wash of Marine One.

Education has found itself perched squarely between the stoniest of rocks and hardest of hard places. At the risk of draping myself in a Captain Obvious cape, teaching kids, especially the little guys, is difficult under the most favorable of conditions. Then, when we plaster tiny masks to their mini mugs and order them to stay six feet from that kid with the cool fidget spinner, doesn't that just seem like a bridge too far? For God's sakes, between the ages of five and eight, I can count the number of times I effectively washed myself, and that would be zero, point zero zero four.

On the flip side, keeping our rug rats at home also causes extreme hardships, both to their social and emotional development and their parents' abilities to earn a living. If there were ever to be a flawless, real-world example of the term "clusterf#ck," educating our children during the age of COVID-19 comes closer than anything since, "Houston, we have a problem."

Like a lot of us, I miss going to work. I miss the morning commute, a daily ritual where I could watch through a scratched bus window as my beautiful city's silhouette came to life against the brightening sky. Ultimately, I'd disappear inside its grey canyons, adding my pulse to the energy from a million other hearts already inside. 

I miss the after-work happy hours where I'd undoubtedly laugh my midriff into a knotted, pre-hernial outgrowth. 

I miss the donuts, but not the donut knife which always ended up inside the pink box next to half a glazed and .173 of a bear claw, it's handle crusty with frosting and coconut shavings.

Okay, that's enough of that. We can't spend our time lamenting the old normal, right? After all, if wishes were fishes, Trump would get a red cod (Little shout out to pun-loving soccer fans from New England!). 

My intent here is not to magnify your angst, oh, goodness, no. It's just that, unless I'm absolutely mindful of it, I trend toward the half-empty side of life's ledger. So, rather than dwelling on  the negatives regarding all the sucky things about working from home, here's one overwhelming positive:

Every day—whether it's today, tomorrow, a week from Thursday or seven fortnights previous to last Tuesday—is t-shirt day! And for that, I say woo to the freaking hoo. 

Okay, granted, it's not like I wore American Gigolo-level duds to work when I was going in on the daily:

American Gigolo-level duds, as worn by Richard Gere in American Gigolo

But I am employed by a fashion retailer, so I couldn't walk through the doors in the morning looking like a total schmendrick. It's why now, during this horrible age of Covid, I can at least finally express my dynamic, sometimes disturbing, inner inklings when the mood strikes. I can now be helplessly nostalgic:

Nerdishly belligerent:

Oozing with dad-quality content:

For Pete's sake, you crazy baboon! Seattle U doesn't, nor have they ever, had a football team!

Incurably provincial:

Playfully fickle with overt notes of shameless dishonesty:

Sociopathically jumbled:

Or just downright inspired:

In this new world, one where we've all been living one week, one day—one health-conscious decision at a time—maybe our work-from-home clothing choices are more telling than I'd ever imagined. Be well.