In office work is relatively new in humanity, even if no one alive today existed before such a time. At one time your neighborhood was not zoned as a monocultu

In office work is relatively new in humanity, even if no one alive today existed before such a time. At one time your neighborhood was not zoned as a monoculture, but included a lot of places to congregate. People got their socializing not from people who were paid to sit in the same room together, but from people who came to a cafe or restaurant or pub to sit in the same room together. If your commute is close to an office it’s also close to a communal space. Instead of doing chores at home during lunch, why not leave your home and your job and be with the people you live around? The people who share your neighborhood are more a feature of your life than the people who share your payroll, in so far as they exist in the same context as you for longer - if you let them. I actually find it sad we’ve lost our communities and traded them for our workplace cliques. We huddle in our break rooms and exchange banalities and assume this is in fact a bond we are forming. We all then commute home to our real life and the two don’t cross over. But life isn’t actually split into two realities, it’s all one thing. We just insulate our valued life over our work life, trying to make a balance between our sacrifice and our existence. This is a new phenomenon in human existence, and I don’t think it’s strictly necessary. And I suspect it’s not healthy. But why does it feel so lonely to work from home? Because we don’t have the skills, mental framework, or neighborhood infrastructure any more to build social connection outside of the artificial community of the office.