Andy lockwood

When the pandemic hit and we all went home, the hardest thing - and the thing that I didn't really understand until much later - was how it kind of destroyed the work/life balance. 

In the Before Times, I went to work, and there was not only a series of doors to pass through to transition from work to home, but miles and time to decompress. At home, and more specifically, working remotely, I would walk out of my "office" and slam into home life. That brought an undue amount of stress into the house - no decompression time, no transition time. What was a 45 minute opportunity for "letting go" became a 10 second window where I brought all the drama and stress into the house with me. No bueno. The other issue was that not only did I have no transition between work and home, but my "getaway" space - where I did my writing, art, gaming, etc. - became my office. When I was off-work, I no longer wanted to spend any time in there. Work had ruined the space I created for myself for peace and relaxation. None of this was a conscious change, but did real-time damage to the peace I and my wife cultivated in our house. It took a long time for us to understand and address this, and even now, years later, somethings are just understood as a necessary evil. Like, we both understand that when there is a bad meeting or something stressful at work, we're going to need a minute to vent and decompress and maybe blow off some steam. 

And while all that is a big deal and detrimental to - I imagine - a lot of folks since the whole Pandemic/WFH shift, the bigger change for me was that I became a dad during this whole shift as well. Let it be said that people do not underscore the importance of how much time your child will occupy in your life. Like, obviously, but still. All of the things that are not work and necessity are moved to the margins. I do all of my creativity either in the early couple hours before Ruby wakes up, or the last couple hours after she's gone to bed. That doesn't make for a lot of time, nor does it contribute to a good creative flow. Beyond that, WFH is hard with a kid. They don't understand the importance of working, no matter how hard you try to explain it. So you're splitting your brain and trying to switch task at an alarming rate, and as we all know, the quality of everything suffers at that point.

II am a writer, artist, dreamer, and horror enthusiast - as if reality isn’t scary enough, right? I have two degrees in film, and spend most of my work time in a training and development capacity. I’ve been working in the elearning space for 17 years and have a colorful background of multimedia experiences in both my work and personal life. I try to approach my life, my hobbies, and my work with passion. That passion is fused with the drive to make any learning experience that I touch into a transformative and (hopefully) entertaining one for its audience. Outside of my work life, I enjoy painting, writing, and spending time with my family. I have self-published three novels: Empty Hallways, House of Thirteen, and Threshold; a 12-part serial, At Calendar’s End, and am a regular contributor to horror anthologies.

I live in Michigan with his amazingly talented and entirely-too-supportive wife, a brood of cats, and a delightfully precocious goblin of a daughter..