Working from home has made the boundaries before work and life incredibly blurry. But the biggest culprit in this is Slack. With Slack, my boss can effectively text me at any time, and over this past year, this slight anxious worry has slowly consumed more of my life than I had ever imagined possible. I knew something needed to change when I got a notification in the middle of sex, and straight-up couldn’t finish until I checked it to make sure nothing crazy was happening.
In normal times, I don’t need slack for my job and am a generally focused sex participant. But the gnawing anxiety of something terrible happening that I am suddenly responsible for has completely erased that. This past weekend, when my boyfriend and I were having our routine two-to-three position course of sex, I was interrupted right before climaxing by that horrible series of pops that indicates someone at work is talking at you. I tried putting it out of my mind, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what could be happening on the weekend at work. Did someone at work die? Did I fuck up and reply all when I was making fun of the HR lady who always starts the emails with ‘as per my last email’? Did I really fuck up and mess up the big report I was supposed to be carefully combing through?
Naturally, I lost focus on my orgasm, and would not get back on track until I knew if this was just a ‘haha’ response to something that happened three days ago or mass layoffs across the company.
After explaining to my boyfriend why I was glancing at the lit-up screen of my phone and that it was just a “Sounds good!” to something I had sent four days ago, I tried to return to having sex but was still so stressed that something else was going to follow. I kept on thinking I was hearing the Slack notification sound. It was everywhere.
Finally, I decided I was deleting slack off my phone once and for all and only using it on my desktop. I then came immediately after, in the most relieving and freeing orgasm I had experienced to date. Now, when I hear that notification sound, I am reminded of how setting boundaries with my work life led to the most intense sexual pleasure ever. Now that’s, as Slack says, where “work” happens!
