Living Apart and Staying Productive

A few weeks ago I tweeted about my wife going back home. You see, we live apart (we have for a while) and because of Covid-19 we got to spend a lot of time together because she basically became stranded where I live.

Those tweets always gets loads of response, which is really sweet. I like that people care so much.

But a lot of people also question it, which I understand. They question the long distance stuff, they ask why we’ve chosen to do this, for how long, how it’s going and wonder about lots of different stuff. (The answers to which are: for work, for at least another year, and we’re great at it).

And last time, someone asked me how I managed to stay productive.

I was confused at first.

Did they mean while my wife was with here with me, thinking we spent all time just holding each other (which of course we did), or while we were apart, thinking I spent all my time missing her (which of course I do)?

They said they meant both. Or either. Anyway, the point was that they figured it must be difficult to have your whole life situation change like that. Sometimes you’re together, and you have one set of routines, and suddenly you’re apart and it all changes.

For me – or I should say us – it’s easy for both of us to stay productive.

When we’re apart, it’s a way to pass time. I work a steady job and do my writing on the side, whereas my wife does multiple different projects all the time that constitutes her full-time work. So she’s constantly working.

When we’re apart, we try to spend that time together, over some kind of video conference thing. We don’t always talk much, but we’re there, me working on my stuff, her on hers. The hardest part of that is really just scheduling it, but other than, it’s very easy to stay productive.

Luckily, we’re still in the same time zone, so we don’t have to do a whole thing with that, which means that we can make time to do our hustles together.

When we’re together, especially the last time we were – at the height of Covid-19 – it’s slightly different. I was lucky enough to be able to work from home, which meant that I’d do my 9 – 5 (actually my 8 – 4 (who the hell starts work as late as 9?)) and then we’d continue hustling.

Of course we’d “lose” more time in being together (and of course that’s not really lost time), going out for social distant hiking, having movie nights, making some special dinners and stuff like that, but still, it was pretty easy to just keep it all going.

I suppose it’s easy for us because we’re two about it. I don’t have to find time to do my writing outside of my wife’s schedule (not that I couldn’t if I wanted to), but she also has stuff she does right there with me.

And when we’re apart… well, we got to have something to do while we pass the time.