Some excellent advice in this thread. One thing that I was fortunate to learn early on, as I've been working from home for 20 years, that many should consider

Some excellent advice in this thread. One thing that I was fortunate to learn early on, as I've been working from home for 20 years, that many should consider now that they are as well, is that it's ok to befriend people at work if you like them, but you don't have to be friends with people at work. You have to work with them, and that requires some sort of relationship involving politeness, trust, and honesty, but that's it. Make friends with people who share your joy in things outside of work. Music interests, food interests, travel, art, comics, robots, crappy television, creating a family, making fun of people with families, whatever. Get a life and make that life with people who aren't paid to be there every day. When you have a solid group of people who basically don't care what you do for a living, the job will matter far less and the things and relationships you share with those people will continue to matter. Your job can give some fulfillment, of course by way of some semblance of security and accomplishment. But the long lasting stuff comes from the things you aren't paid to do - because anything you're paid to do is generally done for someone else's happiness. That's what they're paying for.