Before 2020, I didn’t do a lot of online meetings. At best I was an attendee on someone else’s webinar. I worked for in-person companies, and when you needed a meeting it was always face to face.

And then along came COVID-19. Like everyone else, by the end of March 2023 I was on ‘House Arrest.’ I took over my wife’s office and rearranged the furniture, and learned what remote work was all about. Somewhere along the way, I got comfortable with looking at my own face on the screen.

I never liked the blurred backgrounds in video calls, and I couldn’t pick a background photo that quite fit. I decorated the shelf behind me with some of my usual office baubles, and would add or remove decorations to fit the seasons. Then one day, the message board showed up.

I consume a lot of media: Books, Magazines, TV, Movies, Music, Art. I have a knack for remembering random passages from text, movie quotes, song lyrics. Sometimes they’re appropriate to the situation at hand. Other times, the messages are just a non-sequitur from the corner of my mind.

As I’d have a random thought during the day, I’d assemble it onto the message board and leave it visible in my zoom background for everyone else to read. Part of the fun was that I’d never reference it or acknowledge it unless you said something first.

It turned out to be quite a fun adventure. I ended up changing the message every day or two. Sometimes you got the joke, sometimes you didn’t. I’ve kept it up through job changes, a new office, and countless Zoom meetings and Teams calls.

Follow along on the journey, and don’t forget to smile along the way.