20 Ways You Know You’re a Vegan Who Works From Home

If you’re like us, you work really, really hard—all from the comfort (and sometimes inconvenience or embarrassment) of home. This frequently means two things: that you’re logging more hours than any of your office-bound friends realize (and no, you cannot go sign for their certified package at the post office tomorrow morning! Why don’t they realize you’re in meetings all day?!); and that as you soar in your passionate and unique career, you are falling far behind on some basic personal hygiene. We feel you, friend. Here are 20 ways you know that you’re a vegan who works from home.

1. You don’t clean the air-fryer until the end of the week, after you’ve used it at least twelve times.
2. While the other person is talking, you secretly mute your work calls in order to clean your Vitamix by lightly blending soap and water.
3. At some point in the afternoon, you realize you have a crescent-shaped smear of purple smoothie on your forehead from when you drank your breakfast out of a giant Mason jar.
4. At another point in the afternoon, you look down and notice that your ethically sourced hoodie has a long string of Tom’s of Maine toothpaste going all the way down your torso. You don’t change though.
5. You meet all your deadlines for the day feeling like you’ve really outdone yourself and notice that the pajama bottoms you pretend are work pants have been inside out all day. You go to bed in those inside-out pants.
6. Even though you have more time than anyone to prepare a meal, your cold, undrained block of tofu never makes it to a heat source and you eat it raw with dabs or soy sauce in between bites.
7. Sometimes you share story ideas with your cats who, amidst their kitty slumber, look at you as if to say, “You know we don’t speak English, right?”
8. You wear natural deodorant since it doesn’t really matter if it doesn’t work.
9. Even though you can do your laundry whenever, you wait until you have no underwear left, wear a swimsuit all day, and go gripe about it with other people who only have a short weekend-window to get their clothes clean.
10. You develop a work crush on your mail carrier. Sometimes, you put on a dab of eyeliner just for them.
11. Your Slack buddies feel more like family than your family, and you are better at communicating through kitten Gifs than full sentences.
12. There is at least one occasion when you find yourself writing a very important article about self-care for vegans—proselytizing the value of exercise and getting sunshine—from your bed, where you’ve been all day with your laptop and yesterday’s Starbucks.
13. You’ve created an extensive Spotify station for vegan-sounding songs. Whenever you tell anyone this and they ask you what a vegan song is, you tell them to mind their own business.  
14. You regularly look around your apartment for what might be the newest vegan leather prototype. You’re starting to wonder if tofu containers could be repurposed as a coat.
15. The animal rights nonprofit you work for needs another board member, and you’re seriously considering whether your dog has enough legal personhood to be up for the job.
16. You’ve memorized the discount codes for PostMates and you can recite all of the vegan options within three miles.
17. Sometimes you take yourself out to happy hour … by opening a beer from the fridge … at Noon.
18. Your work break consists of perfecting the homemade vegan dog food you’re cooking up in your Instant Pot. More nooch? More legumes? Both?
19. You try weird combinations of oats plus whatever is around for breakfast because you’re too lazy to wash your face in order to go outside for real food. Sometimes it’s blueberry oats. Sometimes it’s soy sauce oats. Many times, it’s just oats and water, until you run out of oats.
20. You spend your weekends staying away from that one hummus spot on the dining room/work table that you created during the workweek but never cleaned up. You know, to keep work and home separate.

VegNews Digital Director Jasmin Singer and Senior News Editor Anna Starostinetskaya often have to go to the bathroom in the middle of their pitch meetings together, so they mute the phone (sometimes).