[work] I am resigned to working from home

there are plusses, I can watch youtube in the background

but it took me a long time to get used to it

and it took several months and some very negative mental health spells to work out a good work/life balance

I know I'm in a minority in that I have a really short commute, but being able to go from point A to point B in the morning, work, then go from point B to point A again in the evening, leaving all work behind, was really nice

and the basically complete erasure of that has not been great for me

(also, more uncharitably, I feel like I see a lot of "only the higher ups want us back in the office, so their jobs aren't useless!" which... no. not true)

i’m exactly the same way

building the mental divide between work and home was not an easy process

even though work is a 5-min drive, 25-min walk from my house

And I’m at the point where I can certainly do it, but it’s still very much not my preference

my current commute is/was a 15 minute bus ride

and, more broadly, I do worry about a larger erosion between work and home that I haven't really seen anyone talk about (though I haven't looked very hard, admittedly). it's all about the upsides, not the drawbacks

those convos are out there, but it's just not... idk, i do understand why, but i think it's seen as kind of, "we shouldn't be centering the opinions of people who LIKE work, that risks normalizing the daily grind"

and you can't really talk about how maybe it can be simultaneously true that greater flexibility would be beneficial to a lot of people, and a lot of people like having a routine that takes them out of the house

yeah, and I'm caught in the middle of that some, too

again, I'm lucky since my office is very flexivle in terms of hours and always has been, but I approve of both flexibility and being able to work in the office if you want to

plus all the advice I've seen online about how to "prepare your workspace" is predicated on having more than one room to use, which I don't. I sublet, so I can't set up a separate workspace from where I sleep and then close the door on it or whatever people advise

same

i have a little more space than that, but not enough to have a dedicated room for work - my equipment has to be fully set up and taken down every day so we can both use the living room in the evening, and our back storage room is crammed with the stuff the rest of the time

ouch

(we're honestly lucky in some ways that my wife is obligated to go into the office, because if both of us had a work-from-home job I truly don't know where both of us could sit)

that would be an issue!

but yeah. totally sympathize. and not being able to shut the door on the work room to sleep sounds horrible

like, i at least get to physically move the equipment out of sight!

when I've stayed with my boyfriend long term, we've been able to dodge the issue, too, since he's got to go in to the office (he's a test engineer right now)

it was pretty horrible at the start! I started going out to take a walk right after work and that usually helps

Once I got my own place I did have a separate workspace

when I (finally, eventually, ect) move in with my boyfriend in a new place, I'll either set it up in the living room or a spare room, so it is separate

I will say on the whole the upsides have outweighed the drawbacks quite a bit