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How long does it take for a situation to become irremediable? After almost 4 years of working remotely, I had convinced myself that I could no longer set foot in an office. For one thing, I couldn’t see myself bearing the horrendous traffic, so typical in the capital. And for another, how would I be able to manage my social anxiety?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t consider myself to be socially anxious all the time. In fact, I cherish spending time with my friends and family. However, crossing the bridge and having to interact on a daily basis with unfamiliar faces seemed like a lot and I was sure my social skills had drowned at some point during the 7 months of 2020 isolation where my pet was my sole companion.
With all this in my bag, I limited my job prospects to remote positions once I was out of my job for good. I spent some time with freelance projects but it didn’t take long before I realized I needed a more stable situation. Only then, I faced the reality that most companies had ditched the remote mode, with only some offering hybrid mode.
I had some turbulence during my employment search and after some time, I started applying for in-person jobs too.
Returning to the office: How it went
Flash-forward to almost two months after my exhaustive employment search, I started receiving callbacks. And finally, I had a couple interviews with jobs that did interest me. Two weeks later, I was signing a contract with what seemed to be the best fit for me. Yet, there was one thing that struck me: I was going to do a whole month of working in person before I could enjoy the hybrid mode.
The night before my first day, I started feeling nervous. I told myself I could handle it and prove to myself I hadn’t become some kind of hermit.
However, the same questions kept coming to my mind: How long does it take for a situation to become irremediable? What if the isolation period had struck me worse than I admitted to myself? What if I ended up discovering I couldn’t handle strangers around me for a long period anymore?
It took a lot from me to turn down the volume on these ideas. But finally, I did.
Almost a month has passed since my adventure of returning to the office started and I couldn’t be more grateful. It has allowed me to discover I’m not a hermit who cannot build connections. And, above all, I was lucky to coincide with incredible and talented people. Colleagues who, just like me, spent a long time away from in-person work and were a bit nervous about the shift.
Almost a month has passed and all the hatred I feel for the way traffic consumes my time is compensated by the atmosphere of closeness and friendship I find once I open the door and step a foot in the office.
There’s just something so enriching about our different personalities coming together here that I’m glad I was pushed to come back to presential mode.
Somehow, going against my original will was the best. And this experience has proven to me, once again, that challenging our own status quo can bring out the best scenarios.
Challenging what we are accustomed to can be difficult and may evoke a sense of fear. Especially if you dislike uncertainty, like me. But the only way we can grow is by going through different environments. Even plants need to expand their roots beyond the known territory to keep growing.
So next time I find myself in a situation where my need for certainty wants me to stick to what I’ve become used to, I will remember how much I’m enjoying returning to the office. How my irrational fears were merely that: irrational. How none of my worst-case scenarios have come true. How happy I feel here and all I would have missed if I hadn’t gone beyond the comfort of what I already knew.
