Is working from home the dream we all imagined?
We can agree on how convenient it can be to stay at home after your kids wake you up at least 5 times during the night, you are in the first day of your period or you are in one of those days that you really don’t want to have to choose an outfit. Then you can just stay at home wearing your comfiest sport pants, drinking your favorite tea and feeling warm and cozy under a blanket.
But… What happens when day after day, your daily routine becomes going from bed to your desk and back from the desk to your bed?
Isolation, hours and hours on the screen, all day sitting down and without interacting with anyone else but your cat, except for the video-calls and the Slack channels. But again, can we call this human interaction? I was missing smiling at somebody, receiving a hug on a bad day, gossiping about our little personal dramas during the coffee break and getting some fresh air when going for lunch.
Suddenly I found myself wondering if home office was actually the dream I imagined and thinking what I never thought I would think: I miss going to the office!
For sure I don’t want to go back to this rigid working structure where I have to be fixed from 9 to 5 in that gray and boring working cubicle that they called office. For sure I don’t want to go back to 1 hour of public transport to go to work and 1 more to go back home. For sure I don’t want to go back to having to explain where I’m at every second, and for sure I don’t want to miss the chance to work from anywhere in the world any day.
Nevertheless, we are tribal, we are social beings, we need human interaction to survive and to generate the hormones that activate our system and bring joy to our life. We need laughter, and how to laugh when there is nobody around to share a joke with? Does typing “haha” work the same way as sharing the disrupting noise of laughter with a colleague?
In community we thrive, in isolation we wither.
