I had a full day face to face with my team for the first time since March 2020, because of the pandemic obviously. I’m home now after this full day of interacting with people and I’m feeling utterly tired and overstimulated at the same time, which makes for a very interesting combination. How did I do this before the pandemic, when this was the norm?!
I used to get up at 7, leave home by 8, sit in the train or my car for an hour, spend a full day at the office then make the commute back, then cook and then I had a couple hours of free time left. Just thinking about doing that for 4 days of the week again makes me feel ill. I love working from home! It gives me a lot more free time and as an introvert it leaves me with more energy at the end of the day.
Yet, I’m a social introvert, so I do enjoy the company of people. The banter, the easier connection. It’s just that after this one day back I am wondering how I did it 4 days a week before the pandemic hit and not felt so destroyed at the end of the day. It can’t be anything other than being used to it, I guess? Maybe if I was forced to go back to work the way it used to be I’d manage to feel okay with it again, but I’d rather not.
I just can’t imagine being stuck in the morning rush hour again as a normal thing, to arrive in an office where I cannot concentrate (open office plans can fuck right off) on work I could have done perfectly well from home.
I think a golden inbetween would be meeting my team face to face once per 2 weeks. I hope we can do that, but the Corona situation isn’t exactly improving in my country right now. We’ll see!
What about you? Do you yearn for the office like the old days? Or are you also scratching your head, thinking “how on earth did I do this?!”
The ‘old days’ for me involved travelling to the project site and back every week, staying in a hotel every week. Often enough it also included waiting for late trains (and regularly missing connections), or driving about 300km myself. Neither is fun. Staying in a hotel for 3 nights every week wasn’t too great either.
I don’t miss those days. The current state of life means I can go to ‘my’ gym every day of the week (if I like to) and/or go swimming in the North Sea. I can do the shopping during lunch breaks and have much more time to care about heath, fitness and learning. For me the quality of life has clearly improved.
I have no idea how I managed to deal with the before-time.
exactly, quality of life feels way better now!