Morning. I’m bleary, from head to toe bleary. I can hardly focus, but of course the first thing I do is shine a blinding email-shaped light into my eyeholes, in case anything urgent has happened overnight. I’m currently working between York and the US, all from the comfort of my home, and it turns out people on other continents like to keep themselves busy while I sleep.

What used to be a gentle amble into the day (pastries and coffee and Lauren Laverne) is now a frantic overlap of time zones either side of the Atlantic, smashing together with conflicting schedules. It’s all exceedingly disorientating, and I haven’t yet figured out how to handle it. By the time I’ve tackled one country’s yesterday, I have another’s today to contend with, and the first one’s tomorrow is creeping up in the background–

Thanks to the you-know-what, geographical boundaries for the deskbound worker are dissolving. Unfortunately, so is the fabric of time

Somehow it’s afternoon already. For a moment, there’s a respite where there’s only one country in the mix. I can breathe. I should be used to this; I’ve always had a few international clients, but the past year has been something else entirely. Location is no longer a consideration at all. At a time when the UK is doing its damnedest to isolate itself from the world, the opportunity to work across/through/despite borders has come from the most unexpected of places. Thanks to the you-know-what, geographical boundaries for the deskbound worker are dissolving. Unfortunately, so is the fabric of time.

Emails go back and forth at a bizarre frequency. I fling work into an electronic wormhole, to be recovered in some other time and space. And when they eventually reply, they do the same. Even the simplest of tasks, things that require little more than a few emails back and forth, can be dragged out over days … or they can align perfectly and I’m a perfect little elf to their shoemaker, a more efficient working relationship than if I were on their doorstep. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground. And in the background of all this is a simmering anxiety about–

It’s simply going to take a while to define/adjust to temporal rather than spatial barriers. The day has to end somewhere

The evening. Time for tea? No! Time to Zoom! Apparently! Look at them there, awake and bright-somethinged and their tails are bushes or … no, it escapes me. I need a nap. I’m wearing a day’s worth of day on my face and it takes every last bit of energy I can muster to not look entirely dishevelled. Whatever it is this Brady Bunch of faces on my screen is talking about, it’s evidently Very Exciting, but all I can think about is how this should-have-been-an-email meeting is eating into my precious Australian reality TV time, and any moment now it’s going to be–

Night. A crucial point of the cycle, entirely in the hands of serendipity. Sure, I could sleep, I should sleep. Or I could stay awake just a little longer and catch the inevitable “can you make this one little change” email now rather than wake up to it in the morning. Closing my eyes now could be the difference between an immediate “HERO!” or a 12 hours later, tersely unpunctuated and pointedly lowercase “thanks”.

But no, I have to draw a line somewhere, for my own physical and mental wellbeing. That there’s work at all right now is pretty incredible, so I mustn’t grumble. It’s simply going to take a while to define/adjust to temporal rather than spatial barriers. The day has to end somewhere. One quick glance at my phone and then I’m done, lights off, eyes closed. And then maybe another. And another. And–

Morning.

Daniel Benneworth-Gray is a freelance designer based in York. See danielgray.com and @gray