Good morning friends. Every so often on my blog I have a post that I put zero effort into syndicating. This is going to be one of those posts. So if you are here and reading it… that likely means you are amongst my most loyal and devoted readers. In the before times I was your average mild-mannered aging fat software developer and manager, working out of a maze of cubes just like everyone else. My team has NEVER needed to be in an office to do our work, but we existed in a culture that placed a high premium on “butts in seats”. When the pandemic hit we were the first team to go fully remote, and as such acted as the canaries in the coal mine to vet how well it would work. The thing is… it worked amazingly well and at least in part due to some planning and heavy use of the Teams environment… we sort of set the pace for the other teams as they went remote. Now we scan forward and I’ve been working fully remotely for over three years at this point.
For a while, I tried to do a hybrid schedule of a few days in the office and the Lion’s share remote… but the days in the office were just giant wastes of time. I cannot really tell you when I last was in the office, but when I was it was for a very short in-person meeting before going right back to my home office. Next week however I am going to have to be present and in person for a training course that is only offered once a year. So that means I will be in a room with other humans from 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday… and I have to admit I am terrified of this. It is summoning forth so much anxiety that I have begun having “Return to Office” nightmares very obviously sparked by it. This morning I woke up about an hour before the alarm was set to go off and just could not go back to sleep. My mind reeling with all sorts of minutiae that I was trying to figure out how to deal with.
The thing that is terrifying me the most… is knowing that I am going to have essentially all of my work peers in the same training class with me. They are all very extroverted folks and many of them have said more than once how much they miss being in the office, or how much they miss seeing me on the regular. The thing that terrifies me the most above everything else… is contemplating dealing with lunch. I know I will need to run away and hide by myself in order to calm down enough to confront the afternoon session. However once upon a time I was really good at masking my antisocial and introverted tendencies. I pretty regularly went out to lunch with coworkers, because it was the sort of thing that was expected. Working remotely for three years has caused me to jettison behaviors that were stressing me out all along… and I am terrified of what this week is going to do to me mentally.
The thing is… it will probably be fine. I do this thing where I make problems out to be way bigger than they are out of the anxiety of actually doing it. The hardest part about attending anything… is getting out the front door. When I am in the situation I tend to relax into the environment and go with the flow, but I know it is going to be way more stressful than it used to be because I am simply not adapted to it anymore. Truth be told I barely leave the freaking house. On the weekend we make a few trips out for supplies, but during the work week, the furthest I am out of the house is hanging out in the backyard with Greybie. I’m trying to tell my brain to calm down and that everything is going to be fine… but my anxiety is working everything up into a frenzy.
The other thing that is stressing me out is… normally next week would be the week I lock down everything into place for Blaugust but it is VERY unlikely that I will blog at all, given the tumultuous shift in my schedule. So I am trying to scurry around this week and make sure everything is finished because next week… is essentially going to be this void. I will come home from training every night and crash, and will likely be unable to summon cogent thoughts… let alone write something worth reading. Anyways… every so often I make one of these posts where I am brutally honest with my readers. I never syndicate them because it feels weird to let you all into my thought process, let alone publicly broadcast my weaknesses to the world.
My blog is often times therapeutic. There is something about writing things down that allows me to turn them over in my head and process them a bit better. Usually, when I make one of these posts I start to feel better almost immediately, and I am hoping that this time it has that effect as well. I shared a picture of Josie in part because I felt the need to do something to apologize for this giant wall of text. Also, I sort of wish I had her life because she does not give a fuck about anything most of the time. Anyways… I’ve wound down this little written panic attack for now. Tomorrow I will likely write about game things. Today however is devoted to existential dread.
I hate to be that person who says “try this”, but I’m going to be in the hopes of offering something that might help. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of or tried mindfulness? It gets floated as a “cure all”, but it has helped me a huge amount with my pain, fatigue and my anxiety (I went for my fatigue and the anxiety was a pleasant bonus).
There is meditation, but it’s mainly about being in the present and grounding yourself rather than letting your thoughts spin off to the “what ifs” etc. I don’t do the meditations very often now, but if I’m in an especially anxious situation such as a place I don’t feel safe I do a brief breathing exercise to check in with how I’m feeling.
If you’re interested in knowing more let me know, and I can give you some more information.
Sending love and hugs for the tough week ahead <3
I’m a nobody who reads every post you make that I catch. (I manually check your site for updates). This post resonates with me so much. I wish you the best, and am choosing an awkward time to thank you for being so open. There are other socially anxious techs out there who read this and went “thank you for verbalising my thoughts”. Even if they aren’t exactly identical thoughts, they are shared. My hope is “muscle memory”, will help shield you or keep you moving for the next week. Also, I’m sorry for the babble. It’s why I never comment.
Thanks for taking a minute to comment. I am often horrible at actually responding to comments, but wanted to make sure I did. Most of the time when I write a blog post I pretend that I am talking to myself because there is part of me that cannot fathom why anyone would read anything that I write. I also delude myself into thinking that the people who do read my content, must have gotten there through one of the places where I syndicate it. However time and time again I am proven wrong on both points when someone steps out of the woodwork and comments on one of the posts that I made that I purposefully tried not to make a big deal about. I also tell myself that the only folks who read my content are folks who already know me and are “just my friends” but then again new folks keep showing up from time to time.
When I started down the journey of consistently blogging in 2013, I made the decision to be open about my thoughts and feelings. I thought maybe someone out there is reading my struggles through various topics and can relate. Comments like yours sorta prove that theory right. Never apologize for babbling. I babble constantly… I would say 90% of my blog posts are just me working through my thoughts about something and often times most of that is completely half baked. You are always welcome here. I appreciate you fighting the tyranny of a blank text box to share your thoughts with me.
Sending you strength to make it through the in the office week. I know I’d feel the same way if this was to happen to me at work – I’m very much attached to work from home.
On a side note, I didn’t realize how close we were to Blaugust. I’ve just had my eyes on FFXIV Fanfest this month. XD