[streetscaper]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

After two weeks of being back in the daily grind of heading downtown into the office 5 days/week, I gotta say that I freaking love it!

For whatever reason, I work ~1,000x more diligently/effectively/efficiently in a proper office setting, with my colleagues within earshot, than I ever did slaving away by myself attempting to "work" from home the past three years or so. I've been more productive over the past two weeks than I was in two entire months of WFHing.

To explain it to those of you who love the freedom and flexibility of WFH and think I'm insane, I"ll try using the George Costanza "world's colliding" analogy.

For my whole adult life I've had two very different and distinct personas: Home Dan and Work Dan. Home Dan was the fun-loving, hard-partying, devil-may-care slacker who didn't give two shits and just wanted to "take her easy". Work Dan was the serious, take care of business, put my nose to the grindstone and get my fucking shit done Dan.

I kept them safely isolated and compartmentalized from each other because instinctively I knew (though not consciously so at the time) that if Home Dan ever met Work Dan, he would try to kill Work Dan, and I needed both Dan's to keep my sanity and to maintain a certain level of middle class comfort and stability.

When stupid fucking COVID happened, Work Dan and Home Dan were finally forced to meet each other face to face, all day every day, and sure enough, Home Dan totally fucking killed Work Dan, and I slid down into the darkest blackhole of depression that I've ever known (not joking).


Now that I've got real home/work separation and rigid scheduling guardrails back in place, I feel like Work Dan has been reborn!

I literally haven't been happier in years.

LONG LIVE THE OFFICE!

This perfectly explains my view too!