I’m sure most of you out there are familiar with the outbreak on our hands as a world. Thanks to this many of us have found ourselves being told not to go to work, having their works close down, or even being temporarily laid off. I fit into the category of having my work close our offices and instead we’re supposed to work from home for the future. At first, the natural introvert in me was like SWEET. I can watch anime in the background when I’m working, I can game on my breaks, work on cosplay on lunches–it’ll be great. But I was wrong…oh was I wrong. There’s some great things from working from home as weeb, but also some really REALLY unfortunate things. In the end though, I’m just lucky I still get to work–even if there are some things I need to watch out for as a weeb.
#1 THE GAMER GUILT
So to start off with is the guilt. You figure “okay. I’ll just play for my twenty-minute break” and then the next thing you know it’s an hour later, you’re halfway through the dungeon, and you realize you haven’t touched your work computer. So next time you want to game during your break you need to carefully think about which game your playing or whether it’s worth playing at all and save yourself the guilt of not getting anything done (except leveling up).
#2 CATCHING UP ON NEW ANIME
So you think, I’m working from home! I can totally watch some anime in the background of my work. After all, you’ve watched other shows in the background of doing other work before, right? Well. If you’re like me and watch seasonal subbed anime, I HOPE YOU KNOW HOW TO SPEAK JAPANESE. It is actually incredibly hard to keep up with reading subs and doing your work. If you get absorbed in one then you miss a lot of the other. Which means you either end up redoing work or having to rewind your episode. So if you want to listen to anime in the background, listen to dubbed (unless you can understand Japanese), or if by any chance you are the ultimate multi-tasker (your power level must be over 9,000).
#3 NICE NENDOS
You know, the most amazing thing is that we can video conference from home so that we can still hold meetings and see our colleagues’ faces. It’s super lovely. Until you suddenly realize that the only place you can conference from is in your room. From one angle they’ll be able to see the posters of all the fanart you got from con–beautiful, but super weeby. From the other angle they’ll see the shrine of FFXV you have accompanied by some plushies you have to find a home from and your childish hats. And from the last feasible angle, they’ll see your bookshelf. Seems safe. Except no–fuck–abort. Your manga collection is in full view along with your nendoroids and newly acquired figurines. For some reason all of these things seem so unprofessional when all your colleagues have these nicely painted room with mature looking decorations and clean and modern living areas.
#4 STAY COMFY — BUT ALSO WORK APPROPRIATE?
Okay so one of the biggest issues I’ve been having still has to do with video conferencing. I’m at home, I want to wear comfy clothes, and that just so happens to be ALL of my anime and weeb related things. My Cardcaptor Sakura poncho, my weebspeaking gaishits sweater, my Omu Cat sweater, my hot topic anime t-shirts, my stay hydrated long sleeve….but I can’t. Because it wouldn’t be work appropriate at work…and it feels like I shouldn’t wear them at home. I thought at first this might be my own personal feelings…but NOPE. Our first virtual staff meeting and everybody looked just as they would’ve if we were in the office.
#5 ALL OF THE COSPLAY
But the good news though is that there is plenty of cosplay getting done as I work on it in my breaks. Being able to do work from home means that I don’t need to wait all day to get home at 6pm, cook dinner, and then feel too tired to do anything. I’m already home and I don’t have to wait til the end of the day. Cosplay is always a-go.
As a weeb, it’s both great and terrible working from home. It’s easy to get distracted from work, but also nice to have all my nerdy needs at an arms length. And despite these first world weeb problems, I’m super lucky to be able to work from home in the first place.
I truly hope that you’re all hanging in there alright! Things are going to get better–believe it! For now we all just need to embrace a little of our hikikikomori’s side. Just think of it as an opportunity to embrace the things you love. Other than that, do any of you other weebs working from home have tips or troubles? Let me know! And always feel free to reach out if ya’ll need to talk.
Stay weebtastic!
xoxo
Luna
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