One of the worst things about being an inde\u00adpend\u00adent con\u00adsult\u00adant is that you don\u2019t have a lot of col\u00adleagues in the form\u00adal sense of people who work at the same com\u00adpany. You have people you work with on pro\u00adjects, and you have friends, who are often people you work with on pro\u00adjects, or have worked with, or will work with again. It\u2019s easy to get lost in your own world when you work on your own, only com\u00ading up for air when you notice the sky out\u00adside is get\u00adting dark\u00ader and it\u2019s not just that it\u2019s rain\u00ading. Get\u00adting a cup of cof\u00adfee is not the way to take a break and talk to some\u00adbody; it\u2019s just a way to get a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n
Instant mes\u00adsen\u00adger (of mul\u00adtiple brands) fills that gap for me, and gives me a sense of work\u00ading in a group. It\u2019s like being in vir\u00adtu\u00adal cubicles. I can see if people are around, I can see if they don\u2019t want to be dis\u00adturbed. I can knock on their vir\u00adtu\u00adal door to see if they have time for a quick chat. And when the names start to dwindle on the buddy list, I can tell it\u2019s time to knock off for the day. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Being on instant mes\u00adsen\u00adger all day is like being in a vir\u00adtu\u00adal cubicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}