Dear Diary, It's Time for Me to Start Wearing Pants to My Zoom Meetings Again
Sometimes it takes an awkward experience to turn over a new leaf.
Dear Diary,
It’s been awhile since my last entry. These are distressing times, and to be honest, I’ve really been in my feels over the last few days. So I took some time to sit and reflect, and I came to a tough but necessary conclusion: It’s time for me to start wearing pants to my Zoom meetings again.
Yes, going to work in my underwear will be a tough habit to kick. But last week, my comfort-first approach to the virtual workplace got a little…uncomfortable. Look, I don’t know who saw what. All I know is that I stood up to refill my coffee mug, took two steps towards the kitchen and realized I hadn’t side-stepped out of the frame first. I then entered a state of absolute paranoia.
Is it just me, or was there clearly an abrupt pause in the conversation? Is that because Kathy caught an unfortunate glimpse of my thighs? What about Brandon? Jessica? Did the whole team see me in my underwear? There really has seemed to be some tension in the room whenever I’ve chimed in on content strategy lately, but maybe I’m just projecting that? I mean, nobody said anything, but I wasn’t there for the facial reactions either. I was busy panicking off-camera. What about Kyle? Does that particular pair of underwear being covered in Shock Top Belgian White Ale branding give me some sort of leg up with him? He’s always talking about a new craft brewery in the city when we’re making “How was your weekend?” small talk to kick off our Monday meetings. Maybe this humanizes me in his eyes? Gives us something to build on relationally? Does this confirm inter-department suspicions that I haven’t been bringing a whole lot to the table recently? Because I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t. That’s just a phase, though. We all have those phases, right? Kathy has those phases. She’s my boss, not Wonder Woman. Was this the last straw with her? Maybe she’s a beer nerd, too?
I don’t know. Maybe I should start putting some feelers out job-wise, but maybe I’m just in my own head about it. What’s funny is that that Zoom call, like plenty of others, had become one of those meetings where everyone agrees to avoid productivity at all costs in the name of self-care. Sales strategies can wait. Instead, we go in a circle and share some of the ways in which we are all “learning to accept change.”
It seemed that over the course of the pandemic, more and more of our department meetings were becoming this kind of thing. I laughed at these meetings. I messaged co-workers to make fun of our colleagues bearing their souls during these sales calls turned therapy sessions. I mocked these colleagues and considered them mentally weak. It wasn’t until last week’s incident that I was faced with my own hypocrisy, with the amount of change I myself have completely refused to accept.
You could say it boiled down to one second of absent-mindedness. You could say that my own complacency and the Shock Top empire joined forces against me in what could go down as a truly pivotal moment in my marketing career. But the reality is, there were a thousand moments over the last nine months that led to what happened that day. In the end, I can only blame myself.
Sure, I should have been wearing pants during the meeting. But these days, who is? Men’s boxers-only approach to remote work during COVID-19 became the norm months ago. Many of my own co-workers are still doing it today, with great success. No, the habit I’d made of going to work without pants was indicative of a much deeper issue. And the moment I looked down in horror and realized that my own booze-branded package had managed to get in on the whole group counseling thing, I realized that I, the employee who’d spent weeks mocking his teammates for sharing their quarantine struggles, probably needed a space to share my emotions more than anyone.
Instead, I spent months of quarantine resisting my feelings at all costs. When faced with them, I pretended not to know them. I shoved them further and further down, into whatever dark closet of my soul was available.
I buried them with the bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch I scarfed down during Chelsea’s presentation on social media engagement. I masked them with that fifth pot of coffee I drank last Tuesday out of sheer boredom. I shoved them away into that mid-day bowl I smoked alone before shooting off a half dozen unwarranted emails about “building a culture of oneness” at the office, an office that is currently being used by no one. The more my feelings of loneliness and depression bubbled to the surface, the more I resisted them.
I guess you can only run from your feelings for so long before you get caught with your pants down. I’ll just have to make peace with the possibility that, for someone as stubborn as myself, maybe it takes an awkward experience over Zoom to start making some serious improvements in the self-respect department. I really do feel like I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m learning to love myself, accept myself, share my struggles openly with close friends, and I’m even starting to wear pants again. That being said, I bet all this emotional growth would feel way better if I didn’t have this creeping feeling that my job is in serious jeopardy.