This. FFS who wants to stay home to live and work!?!?
I don’t understand WFH.
the right way is to have better public transport and cheaper housing, not secluded lives.
I agree with you that better public transportation and cheaper housing would be a respectable path towards a better society in general.
However, please don't state that "the right way is to have... not secluded lives." Some of us absolutely enjoy the seclusion, especially this WFH Alaskan.
“You do enjoy it…just like alcoholics enjoy alcohol.” I mean, assuming I’m reading this correctly, seriously? Let people enjoy their choices, and without pulling questionable comparisons out of thin air. Especially when we aren’t given complete context, as with parent. Don’t take one sentence and then turn around and say, “doesn’t sound healthy”.
The entire zeitgeist is that people are more and more isolated and lack a support network.
We can put 2 and 2 together and figure out that physical isolation in environment where people live far apart from each other and drive everywhere is... isolating?
And by the way, there are studies that show that even for introverts, socialization (even forced!) is ultimately good.
We're not made to sit alone in a room in the middle of nowhere. We were born in caves filled with our tribesfolk, dozens and dozens of people living together in small spaces.
Also, who said anything about alcoholics? Alcohol is just bad for you. Anything except for very small amounts has a ton of bad side effects. It's just "grandfathered in" (just like tobacco) and seen as socially acceptable.
> We're not made to sit alone in a room in the middle of nowhere.
You seem to be implying that people's social lives revolve around work. A lot of us prefer to spend that effort on family, friends, and community during the other 72 hours of the week we are free instead.
I'm 43. Doing things with coworkers isn't even remotely appealing as it was 20 years ago, because at the end of the day they are coworkers and not friends (usually).
Who says remote work means you have to stay home all the time? Stay home to work and make sure you leave at least once, ideally two or three times a day!
In the morning for a walk or workout or coffee break.
At lunch just to breath some air.
At 5PM[1] sharp laptops closed to reconnect with some of your favorite humans, not necessarily the same ones you live with.
[1]: or whatever hard stop you craft for yourself.
Remember that "pandemic remote work" is not at all normal remote work. I have a social life outside of my coworkers. I can work from places that aren't my home office - a cafe, a coworking space, whatever - even if it's just a couple hours to get out of the house.
This. Even before the pandemic, when I had to waste two hours a day, every day, to go sit my butt in my employer's chair, all my "social life" was strictly with people other than my coworkers.
So being able to get those two hours back, even if not all of them but every other day, is a net gain for me. I can go for a walk, lift some weights, space out on the couch, whatever. It's also much easier to not always eat the same plastic lunch every day, or have to prepare things that are easy to reheat in a microwave.
If you compare the economic costs of public transport and “cheaper” housing to WFH’s requirement of an internet connection, it’s much more cost effective to work from home. Now we could say that face-to-face interaction outweighs these costs economically, but you’d need the data, and at least in terms of commuting you’ll never beat the ecological footprint of not going anywhere.
Because "home", for me, while I've been working remotely since 1994, has been Indiana, to Puerto Rico, to Budapest. I go when I want, do a little schedule juggling maybe. And now I live in the tropics in the jungle on a mountain coffee farm - the best place to spend a global pandemic - and I still have an income.
People aren't going to get better public transport or cheaper housing in the USA. I want to stay home and live and work. I've done it once before over a decade ago and doing it now as a result of the pandemic and I love it.
This only makes sense if you were born and raised in San Francisco, Seattle, Milan, London, Dublin, Munchen, Berlin, Amsterdam or some other big tech city.
In my current house, my commute would be 1 hour each way if I wasn't working from home. I'd be leaving early and getting home late. I'd have no time with my wife, son, pets. No time for housework/extra projects. I did this commute prior to having a kid and it worked then, but it wouldn't work now.
