2 ms·

I feel isolated and stir-crazy. I go for walks before and after work every day, runs on alternate days, bike rides most weekends. Also meet friends for meals or

I feel isolated and stir-crazy. I go for walks before and after work every day, runs on alternate days, bike rides most weekends. Also meet friends for meals or coffee most weekends. It's not nearly enough. Much as I hated the open office, the regular routine of leaving the house to be around other humans (something I had my whole life until March 2020) turns out to have been a load-bearing structure in my well-being. I despised the open office, and my home setup is infinitely better for getting focused work done, but I also don't think I'm cut out for such a monastic life.

fenchurch420 5y ago
I feel exactly the same way. The tech industry's (and my own peers') enthusiasm for remote work sometimes leaves me feeling low-key gaslit about how much I've struggled. I never wanted to work remotely full time, and was totally unprepared to have such an (apparently) important element of my mental health knocked out from under me. Who cares about whether office talk spurs "innovation" or not? I wasn't asking for my baseline level of human contact to be so completely disrupted, and having this loss so consistently framed in the context of business value is incredibly frustrating. Like you, I exercise regularly and socialize outside of work. But it's not enough, and I'm tired of the narrative that it can/should be. If you'd have shown me this life two years ago, I'd have told you that I'm living like a shut-in. "Monastic" is a really good way of putting it. On a positive note, I've been seeing a therapist for most of 2021 and cannot I overemphasize how much it has helped. Isolation has been fertile ground for anxiety and imposter syndrome, but I cope more effectively now and its kept me from losing too much productivity at work. If you're able to work with a mental health professional, I really recommend doing so. I think I'll come out of all this stronger, but it's been hard. I'm really looking forward to the day where I can seriously consider something local, a few days a week in-person sounds magical. Thank you for posting this, hang in there!

fenchurch420 5y ago

I feel exactly the same way. The tech industry's (and my own peers') enthusiasm for remote work sometimes leaves me feeling low-key gaslit about how much I've struggled. I never wanted to work remotely full time, and was totally unprepared to have such an (apparently) important element of my mental health knocked out from under me. Who cares about whether office talk spurs "innovation" or not? I wasn't asking for my baseline level of human contact to be so completely disrupted, and having this loss so consistently framed in the context of business value is incredibly frustrating. Like you, I exercise regularly and socialize outside of work. But it's not enough, and I'm tired of the narrative that it can/should be. If you'd have shown me this life two years ago, I'd have told you that I'm living like a shut-in. "Monastic" is a really good way of putting it. On a positive note, I've been seeing a therapist for most of 2021 and cannot I overemphasize how much it has helped. Isolation has been fertile ground for anxiety and imposter syndrome, but I cope more effectively now and its kept me from losing too much productivity at work. If you're able to work with a mental health professional, I really recommend doing so. I think I'll come out of all this stronger, but it's been hard. I'm really looking forward to the day where I can seriously consider something local, a few days a week in-person sounds magical. Thank you for posting this, hang in there!