HumorIs – Adam Overland

I had another commentary in the Star Tribune this week (posted below in case you don’t have a subscription). I think it’s probably a top ten or fifteen for me among the things I’ve written, so I’m glad they published it. I’d titled it “Working from blimp” and ended it the same way, though the editor and I had a little back and forth about whether it should be “working from a blimp” or “working from blimp.” I said my only argument, really, is that working from blimp sounds funnier, but that it was their call, and so they added the “a.” I was just happy to be having a conversation, honestly, about the pros and cons of using or not using “a” in front of “blimp.” I figure if I keep writing for them and get a little stature, then someday maybe I can put my foot down and say, “Nancy (not real name), that fucking “a” is just not doing it for me! Either “a” goes or “I” go!” Then I storm out. 

The essay is, to me, a little bit about privilege and the work/life dynamic, and I got to throw in a tiny bit of math I did about income inequality and how lots of us are somehow just fine with making .00384% of what the median CEO pay was last year—that’s how far down we have been beaten—but mostly it’s just jokes about working from a camper for part of the year.

I’m hoping if I keep plugging along, maybe I’ll get to be a regular guy who’s in the paper sometimes, like that guy at the bar who I always wanted to be growing up, the guy you’re happy to see even though you don’t know him very well, because he’s reliable. I’d be the guy in the paper, just writing about whatever I feel like… bunnies in my yard, finding peanuts under a patio chair seat cushion where chipmunks had hidden them after helping themselves to the neighbor’s outdoor rodent snack bowl. That happened yesterday. 

Speaking of which, last year the ground squirrels had such a bounty they invited even distant cousins to live in the yard, and I had holes popping up, so I bought some poison at Ace Hardware up the street. But then about an hour after putting out the poison, I felt really bad and I went out and picked up all the pellets I could find. The problem with most yard rodents is that they are pretty cute and fun to watch sometimes, even though they are stupid assholes a lot of other times. 

I feel like they are just out there doing their business of life, whatever it is for them. Snacking, chasing things, digging holes, sometimes just napping in the sun or cooling themselves by laying in a little dirt depression. It’s especially hard to want them dead when I see them doing things I like to do, like snacking, napping in the sun, or laying face down in a dirt hole. Because then you realize, hey, they enjoy stuff. Maybe not in the same way as me, but somehow they do.

Like today—and this next part is rated R, fair warning—today I saw a gopher humping another gopher, and then that gopher fell off and turned around and the gopher that was getting humped started humping that gopher. I wasn’t sure if it was a gang thing, maybe a dominance thing, or a show of support for Pride Month, or how sex even works among ground squirrels, but I was like, “Oh, that is really nice for them.” I guess I just want them to have a good time. They are family men and businessmen and women squirrels and gophers living their lives, and they probably don’t deserve to die just for doing their jobs. On the other hand, if they were fatter and more delicious, I’d probably eat them. 

I was actually going to write here about comments on my stories from some readers, and how depressing it is for those of us with thin skin to hear negative feedback, which is why it took me until age 45 to start writing for real, and so I shouldn’t read comments, but rodents, as usual, distracted me, so maybe next time. 

Here’s that essay:

Working from blimp

I’ve been working from home since Covid came calling like a telemarketer we couldn’t find a way to hang-up on. The world changed. Those fortunate enough to have meaningless (non-essential) jobs initially worked from couches, resting our laptop on our chests, poking out terse email replies with otter paws, wrists bent 90 degrees and the company ergonomics department nowhere in sight.

The world was ending anyway. So we’d rise in our pajamas and never take them off, or take video meetings from the waist up, half our bodies “working” while the other half fully committed to the “from home” part of the equation.

Then the pandemic let up. High profile companies that initially committed to allowing many employees to work from home indefinitely began to backtrack, citing productivity, collaboration, office “culture,” serendipity, etc. Employees are still pushing back.

It took me some time to realize that working from home need not be literal. I could, for example, work from someone else’s home. I could work from hotels. The key was internet access. Meanwhile—say what you will about him—that controversial wizard Elon Musk was moving Starlink satellite internet beyond beta mode into reality, so I bought a camper, equipped it with wifi, and hit the road in the winter of 2023 to work from a much smaller home with wheels in warmer climates. I let the snow pile up in Minnesota while I visited national and state parks and forests in North and South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia. There were beaches. The sand piled up in the camper. That first trip I saw perhaps one other Starlink at each campground I visited.

This winter I visited Big Bend National Park, then made my way through forests and parks in New Mexico, Arizona, southern California, Nevada, and southern Utah—wherever the weather was nice and I could work outside. This year, it seemed like every 5th camper had a Starlink. The world is changing—fast.

In my job, they care that the work gets done, but not as much about where it gets done. And as long as you’re a diligent employee who also cares about your work—then your work gets done and it gets done well. 

And so I’ve been thinking about buying a boat—one you can sleep on. The thing with Starlink is that low or no tree coverage is ideal, and two hours north is the greatest of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior, with its welcoming shorelines of seaside communities, camping opportunities, and even rarely visited islands that happen to be national parks. Or I could float down the Mississippi River, Mark Twain my way into New Orleans and perhaps dance a little better on land because of my new sea legs. I could wear an eyepatch. Nobody knows me there.

Where else can I work from home? Airplanes have wifi, but they are expensive and the flights relatively short. Could I work from a hot air balloon? The space might be cramped and exposed to the elements. What about a blimp? Is that available? And if I let my boss know, would it raise eyebrows? If I set my work calendar to indicate “working from blimp,” would that cross an unwritten line, flaunting convention a little too frivolously? A certain jealousy might even arise as I floated over my former physical office on my way to say, Patagonia, edge of the world. What are the rules here?

More and more, CEOs want workers back in the office, perhaps because they are in the office. After all, what is the point of rising to the top if no one is around to see you at the top? But isn’t there an unwritten rule that if you make five or ten or even $16 million dollars a year, that you need to be highly visible? (WSJ reported that the median pay for CEOs of the biggest companies reached $15.6 million last year.) You need to be in the office. Whereas if you make a fraction of that, say, around .00384% of that—about what the average worker makes—can we not work from blimp?