Prattle Call

This week’s new Dustinland comic is about the nervous polite chit chat that most meetings begin with. This is not limited to remote meetings, although they seem to make it a bit worse. But even in the office you have it. There’s that silence when everyone is just filing in and the first attendees feel the need to fill the void with something, but we’re not all friends so we all just wind up talking about the most nothingness of nothings. It’s honestly not even talking, it’s more like a ritual of politeness, like bowing.

I think the most painful for me personally is people from warm sunny places like LA talking about the weather. Either that or “got any weekend plans?”

Workin For The Weekend

This week’s new Dustinland comic is about how sometimes the weekend feels like an endless routine of chores, which is disappointing after looking forward to it all week.

Of course sometimes the weekend is super fun. But not always. This comic is about the not always times.

Also it is annoying to have that “how was everyone’s weekend?” conversation, especially when it’s with people you barely know, because if you went to the beach, sure, that’s fun to share, but if your kid had a fever or if you played roller hockey in an abandoned corporate park… then it’s weird.

Technically Speaking

This week’s new Dustinland comic is about the wonderful perfect tech paradise we’re all currently living in. It’s actually more of a series of vignettes around this theme rather than the usual strip that’s essentially one continuous “story.” That’s because I decided to ideate on this topic and came up with all these little thought starters and was originally going to make each its own comic, but then felt that these themes didn’t deserve 8 weeks of content, plus then I’d just turn into CNET or something.

But yeah…I think we’ve all read about the promise of the smart home and this Jetsonsesque connected future, and yet we can barely get two or three devices to connect seamlessly. Not to say I’m a total ungrateful skeptic — I mean, right now I’m sort of beaming my thoughts into your brain and we live possibly thousands of miles apart and have never met. So that’s pretty cool. If only they could get my robot vacuum to not break after 6 months, we’d be good.

Resignation

This week’s new Dustinland comic is about what it’s like to start a new gig during a pandemic.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love working from home. But I love the freedom to WFH when I want or need to. What is wearing on me is the need to WFH all the time. It just starts to get depressing being in the same room all day, every day, and then even when you’re in this sort of life-changing situation, you’re still there, and the feeling of newness that usually comes with a new job is muted.

Have you experienced this? That would mean you’re part of The Great Resignation — the huge amount of people getting new jobs during 2021. Hence the title. See what I did there?

These Days

This new Dustinand comic is a typical day of quarantine in a nutshell. No words. Just lots of eating, drinking and clicking. A friend asked why I didn’t throw in showering or getting dressed or bedtime with the kiddos… all good points but for some reason I feel like the day is best encapsulated by the things I included here. Food, drink, work, screen time. Repeat. With maybe a couple more months to go…  yikes.

Work From Home Brew

Quarantine means working from home — at least for those lucky white collar peeps such as myself. And as we are trapped inside safely, not forced to risk our asses for everyone else like so many essential workers are right now, many of them severely underpaid and unappreciated, those of us unfamiliar with this kind of work style are learning that we need tricks to successfully WFH. This new Dustinland comic is about a new one I just discovered! Maybe not sustainable but for now, it feels pretty right.