wfh was, net-net, a terrible and somewhat unhealthy experience for me.

socializing with people is an active effort for me. i am very good at it, but i have to do it often, or I will naturally hermit and want to be away from everyone, including my wife, who I very much enjoy spending time with. (we don't have children.)

full wfh during 2020 and 2021 slid the notch well into hermit territory.

i was not good at vocalizing when i need time alone (as I discovered, thanks to covid). this led to me being mad at everyone and everything a lot of the time. i am unbelievably thankful to be with someone who dealt with (and deals with) my bullshit when i got (and still get, albeit much less so) like this.

gyms being closed exacerbated this. i did bodyweight and walked a lot, but nothing can replace the rack.

(keeping a daily mood journal and spending a few months in therapy helped a ton here.)

we were also in a two bedroom 1200sq apartment, which made it somewhat worse because one of us had to use the living space as a work space, which introduced work-life balance issues. moving to a bigger place helped here, but that happened after vaccines were widely available.

i am also insane and LOVE traveling for work and being on client sites.

the chaos of enplanement/deplanement and irrops. Hell, everything about aircrafts. Earning points for my wife and I to enjoy amazing vacations with. Working in different offices and experiencing different work cultures. Exploring new restaurants in new cities and hanging out with my coworkers, who were all lots of fun to be around. Saving tons of money through expenses. I love ALL of it.

getting an 80% travel gig was a dream come true for me, doubly so when my wife told me she 100% supported it!

(every hiring manager thinks I'm joking when I say that I prefer 80% travel and will go anywhere in almost a moment's notice. I'm not joking. I can pack in ten minutes and be in the air in two hours. my wardrobe is heavily optimized for travel.)

most importantly, traveling gave me four days of time to myself and time to hit my work and side projects (when i did them) insanely hard without feeling like i was neglecting my wife.

it refilled my solo time cup, and made me be able to give 1000% to my wife and acquaintances without feeling like i'm losing out on me time.

trading the travel for zoom calls fucked that up in a big way. after customer or project work, gym, dinner and spending time with my wife, i often feel like I have almost no time to myself. this has made me irritable at times (see above). i took a solo vacation for four days this year JUST to get my alone time back...and I didn't feel good about it. i've enacted strategies for dealing with this, but travelling for work made this problem so easy to deal with.

most comments about WFH on Reddit and HN gush about how awesome it is for lots of good reasons, so I spent lots of time really thinking about _why_ i love the travel. i concluded that traveling for work is integral to a happy career for me because I just friggin' love it! (I've also never been one to stay home very long; I found ways to be out of the house long before COVID.

I made moves to travel again. I'm traveling more and am much happier overall.

that said, i definitely empathize with people for whom WFH was a blessing in disguise. so many parents got time with their children back. i am not normal; most people HATE commuting, and not having to do it was tops for them. lots of folks have to wear clothing that they hate when they'd rather work in comfy clothes; wfh gave them that. wfh also made it easy to schedule chores or other home obligations without giving up productivity. (i liked this because of its flexibility, but also hated this because it felt disruptive.) lots of folks liked working in an office or room that they designed with their own equipment stocked with their own food and coffee than a shitty box with crappy coffee and food lit with fluorescent lights or arrays of LED downlights.

this was long; thanks for reading and giving me a space to air this out.