What do you do when it’s Monday, and you have no clue as to what you are going to do at work today, especially when you are working from home and you have to log your work hourly? I know, I shouldn’t complain because I have a job, I mostly like working from home, and I don’t have to go anywhere if I don’t want to. However, trying to find something to do all the time can be a bit exhausting too. I had this problem a lot when I was in the office, but since I’ve been home, I have actually been very productive, much more so than at the museum. I’ve created videos for virtual public programs. I’ve written several new curriculum guides. I’ve done a ton of research, endless webinars, virtual meetings, and even a class. The webinars are often quite boring and not all that informative. The meetings are all a waste of time. Working for a university makes things a little uncertain right now, so no one really knows what’s going on. The plan (and the “plan” has changed many times) is for students to come back to campus and take classes but the public won’t be allowed on campus. The museum can’t have public programs, we can only teach limited classes, the public can’t come to visit (meaning no tours either), and students can’t use us as a walkthrough to the library. What are we even going to be there for? I’m honestly scared the administration is going to figure this out and furlough us all, but they keep saying they are going to “keep the family together.” So, today is another day. I will probably do research most of the day. I can’t even watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine on BBCAmerica because they are doing what looks like nature shows this week. I’m not sure what else to do. I’ve just about exhausted all of my projects.

Anyway, that’s what I was thinking about last night before I went to bed.

Over the weekend, I finished a four week online class that I was taking. It took up a lot of my time, but I refused to work on it outside of work hours. It was a class for work, so for four weeks that was mostly what I worked on from my home office.  Now that the class is over, I have to catch up on everything else I’ve needed to do over the past four weeks. So, it’s been a pretty busy week. I’m still behind. I have to work on some outlines for a book proposal; I made a video for a Fourth of July program that the museum will put on our Facebook page Saturday; and I’ve got a thousand other little administrative tasks and emails to read, write, and answer. At least it’s giving me something to do while I work from home. I have been busier working from home than I ever was when I was in the office. There, I spent most of my days trying to figure out what I needed to do next. At home, there are lots of webinars and projects to keep me busy. 

I’m probably busy because of a stupid decision made by my idiot boss. He’s a fairly nice guy, just stupid and being a museum director is way over his head. He wasn’t even very good at his previous job at the museum. When we started working from home, we were told by the administration that we had to keep a log of what we were working on to make sure we were actually working from home. My idiot boss submitted to his boss an hourly work log for us to fill out each day. That was not what his boss had in mind at first. I’m pretty sure the administration just wanted a weekly report of what we did, not a blow-by-blow, hour-by-hour report. He’s such a colossal suck up, and he does all these stupid overly complicated things to impress his superiors. He just needs to man up and concentrate on doing his job and not trying to impress his bosses. No other department is doing hourly work logs. We are the only ones keeping such minute logs, and we have to justify all 40 hours that we work each week.

I love my job, but damn, I could have listed five projects and been done with it. One quarter of the time, I just write down stuff that only took me an hour to do, and I put it down for 2-4 hours. I do this because some things don’t take a full hour to complete and I’m not going to give a minute-by-minute report. I’m not in any hurry to get back to the museum every day. I actually like working from home, and there is almost nothing that I have to do at the office, especially when classes are virtual and we cannot have any public programs. Anyway, I just keep plugging along.

The traditional role of museums is to collect objects and materials of cultural and historical importance, preserve them, research them and present them to the public for the purpose of education and enjoyment. This mission becomes increasingly hard when the museum is not open to the public, and the people who work in the museum are working from home. Curators still have to go in and check the environment of the museum and check that the collection is safe, but for the most part I have not been the one going into the museum to do this. I have been in a few times to get things from my office, but I’ve rarely stayed over five to ten minutes.

The essential mission of the museum hasn’t changed, but the way we function has during this pandemic. We are unable to continue to collect artifacts during this pandemic, but we are able to continue to preserve the artifacts. We also can continue to research objects, which is one of the main things I have been doing from home. I have also been working on ways to present objects from the collection to the public virtually. As Curator of Education and Public Programs, it’s my job to find ways to present our collection and information to the public for education and enjoyment.

Today, I’ll be going to the museum to film a program to be added to our Facebook page. I hope it goes as planned. I have the script written, and I know what objects I’ll be presenting. I’m looking forward to playing with iMovie to edit what I film. Back when I was the drama club advisor at my former school, I filmed and edited the drama club productions. Back then I didn’t have a Mac, so I used a different program than iMovie, but the basics are the same.

Fingers crossed, everything goes well today. I know I won’t look great on camera because I need a haircut, but so does nearly everyone else. Honestly, I never look great on camera anyway. I’ve always taken bad pictures.