Thankfully, digital marketing is thriving in these hard times. Communication has moved online and I'm very thankful that my job is still intact. I'm on day 30 of working from home and let me tell you, it's a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I'm around my family a lot more and luckily we all get on like a house on fire, so there have not been any major arguments as of yet. There are definitely upsides to this lockdown. I do also wish that everybody reading this is well and healthy and that stands for your family too. My condolences are with those who may have already lost people that they love. This is not a brilliant situation for the world to be in.

Working from home is what most people are doing right now and I want to thank the key workers that are helping everyone in this tough situation. Some people are struggling and others are thriving. There's been a rise in staff being furloughed and I'm shocked at the spike in unemployment. Again, I am extremely thankful that my job is currently secure but there are definitely some downsides about working from home. So here are the truths:

Technical Problems

These are the bane of my existence. Zip files, not opening, uploading to Dropbox takes hours, my Outlook decides to crash, no more space on my computer. Name the technical problem, and I've probably experienced it. Usually, when in this office this is a simple call to the IT department or physically handing someone a hard drive to share files. When you're working from home, these technical problems are a little harder to solve.

An instance would be my computer storage. It's very low without having all of the Adobe Software installed on it, Outlook, Microsoft Teams and god knows how many downloads I've had to make. The other day I was going about my work and everything crashed because there wasn't enough space on my computer. It's actually a joke!

Working on a laptop

I don't own a desktop computer, as a family, we made the decision to have laptops as it was easier for us all to access the internet. Working on a 13-inch screen 2015 MacBook is not fun, let me tell you. It's small, my posture is horrendous and it also means that I don't want to blog because I've usually spent the whole day sitting at it.

Despite this, by working on a laptop, it means that I can walk around and move to different locations in the house to work. If it's a nice day then I can even go outside in the garden.

WiFi

I cannot count how many times the WiFi has gone down and I've had to resort to my data. I think it's because there are so many people on the internet, or my family are doing something to interfere with the connection, or it's simply the weather. Bad internet connection resorts to online meetings being laggy, pixelated or just completely cancelled because there's no way you can be productive.

Internal Communication

Running social media for a company is difficult when I'm in the office, even more so now everybody is working from home. Whereas I would take a walk and go and chat to a colleague to confirm something I now have to rely on video calling or them responding to my email. It makes things increasingly difficult for me to create content and publish this in the right time scales.

However, it also means that I have more time to focus on creating good and genuine content as fewer people are coming to me for help and I'm not being called into as many meetings. When I was in the office, I would only have 15 minutes here and half an hour there so I am definitely getting more time to focus in on work.

Blurred lines

When you're in or out of the office it's very easy to see. You're either there or you're not. The lines begin to blur when working from home because it's not so black and white to people. It doesn't matter if I put that I'm out of office on my calendar, I still end up having to deal with work-related issues in my own time.

If you also don't have a dedicated office space like we don't, then it becomes increasingly difficult to separate your work and home life.

Neighbours

Put your hand up if you've been on a meeting and your neighbour has decided to start DIY! That's all anyone seems to be doing at the minute, renovating. I have been doing the same and it's the perfect time to do it. Not so perfect when you're on a really important call.

I'm sure there are other ugly truths to working from home. Let me know if you can think of any more and I'll 100% relate.

This time can also be really lonely so if you ever want to drop me a message, get in touch!

Read next:

Why my imperfections make me who I am
14 things I've learnt in 14 years of education
The small things in life