by Matt Garrepy
I’m not one to take selfies. Trust me, I’m saving everyone the grief of looking at my mug. But I wanted to document my state at 6PM as I was about to leave the office last Friday night.
I’ll sound like a broken record if I say it was another long week. But look at that guy. It was indeed another long week.
To bring you up to speed: I’ve been working in 7,500 square feet of loneliness at the Solodev headquarters in Orlando for the last two months, standing guard and collecting mail so our team could shift to a fully remote mode. Our company has always been distributed by design, so we were able to pivot quickly and provide support from the safety of our homes.
We’re also an essential digital business, supporting enterprise and government customers on the front lines of this pandemic. We could have been doing this from our beautiful US headquarters, which we expanded last year to meet our growing needs. But like so many of you, we put our team and their families first, sending them home at the very beginning of the lockdown.
This space should be teeming with life. But it’s not. There’s just me.
The essence of being a “Solo Dev” has always been about empowering a single builder to do more. But we don’t always build alone. In fact, we do some of our best work when we do it together. That’s why we’ve always focused on unifying teams, reinforcing collaboration, and bringing people together to create content and experiences. That’s not just something we espouse to our customers – it’s a talk we’ve always walked. Having a shared space has enabled our people to innovate on accident, to fall into conversations that don’t follow a pre-defined path. To be a creative chorus.
God, do I miss that.
I’ve often shared my COVID working conditions in conversation, asking customers or partners if they’ve seen “I Am Legend” or “Silent Running” – both films that explore dystopian solitude with a bit of abject narcissism. Most days, I feel like Will Smith, alone on the elevator, walking back to my car in a near empty garage. I’m talking to myself more than ever (which I guess could be perceived as heathy, although I never know who wins or loses an argument). And while I see small signs of life starting to emerge, I’m still, for the most part, alone.
Sure, I’m on calls all day, seeing humans on screen – just like the rest of you. But it occurs to me how many people might have been alone this entire time, removed from any physical connection. I get to go home and fall into the embrace of my family, and I probably don’t appreciate just how lucky I’ve been to have that relief. And of course, there have been advantages to commuting to an office: no competing conference calls with my wife, and no 16-year-old distractions after 12PM (which is generally what time my son rises from the dead to satisfy his distance learning requirements).
And so it goes: we start to return to some semblance of normalcy, and we forget who we were during these moments. I guess with this photo, I’ll remember that I was a little broken, a lot disheveled, and badly in need of a haircut. I’ll remember having to make hard choices about resources, trying to judge what’s essential and what is not.
I’ll recall the opportunity for our team to help one of my customers build an application to securely share blood results for convalescent plasma donations – which is, at this moment, providing antibodies to COVID-19 patients and saving lives.
And on the light side, I’ll remember pushing our ping pong table against the wall of one of our kitchen areas, so I could attempt to play by myself during a mid-afternoon break. Sad? Yes. But at least I don’t have to explain how I lost an actual match to a Millennial. That’s the worst.
We’ve all been sharing so much of ourselves these past few months. The posts I’ve seen have been both harrowing and heartwarming. In this way, screens have brought us together to share in our grief and grandeur. Through all of it, what’s clear is that we haven’t stopped living – we’ve just adapted the model. In the aftermath, there will be lessons for each of us, for each other, for our “Coronababies” who sit in disbelief as we tell distant, bizarre tales of 2020. These stories will settle in their brains like bad fiction, and that’s OK. It’s hard to believe most of what’s happening right now... and we’re actually living it.
As we celebrated Memorial Day weekend in the states, it’s apropos that I’ve been thinking about memories. This is a solemn time, but also a joyful one, marking the start of the summer season. We have much to lament – and more to be thankful for.
So I encourage you: keep making memories. Hold on to them. Share them. Let them be the glue that keeps us together during the worst of times. Because somewhere in these moments – when we are truly tested – we see the best in one another.
Oh, and it’s totally OK to talk to yourself. Just remember to be kind when you’re doing it.