Basically for most of my adult life I’ve struggled to have a life that I truly wanted. Not comparing myself to anyone else, but going from job that let me go to job that let me go. Not making ends meet. I never felt “normal.” I always felt like an anomaly.
Then the pandemic hit; while everyone else was panicking and not sure what to do for me it was–at worst–a mild inconvenience; and at the time I was working a retail job (at last feeling like I wasn’t going to get fired at the drop of a hat, which was a weird feeling). I was tech freelancing on the side, too, which is where my skill set was.
Then suddenly freelancing took off (I think it was because of the freelancing sites I was on “rotated” me to the top). I was able to quit my job, do freelancing full time. I was able to go on actual dates (since I want to get married). I moved out of my parents place. It was awesome. For once I felt “normal.” Again, while everyone was panicking I felt like I was finally going in the direction I had planned, with ease.
Then when everything was going back to “normal,” I started to lose the success that I had gained. The clients that I worked for during the pandemic didn’t seem interested in continuing working. I’ve since had to fight every day to get back to what my normal was (which was everyone else’s unusual season).
Anyone else feel this? Pre and post pandemic was chaotic, and the pandemic for me felt like I was finally getting somewhere in life. I realize a lot of folks died because of COVID (and many more families split because of it), but it just angers me whenever people talk about the “new normal” when there wasn’t a “normal” for me to begin with.
The pandemic dramatically improved my life. My income doubled, I got a way better career job at a workplace with permanent work from home. I finished a certificate I was working on. No one in my family or friend group got seriously ill with it or died. It was a tragic time but I’m finally living the life I always wished I was - I totally get it. I can’t really talk to anyone about it. I’m terrified work from home will get clawed back. My wife took an in office job and I hardly ever see her anymore with her work hours.
What shits me off the most about the push to return to the office by so many employers is that there’s zero logic to it. I wish they’d just come out and say “we just want to be able to monitor and micromanage you at all times, also we need to justify this building lease we’ve signed.” Fuck the HR script, just be honest about how little you care about your employees’ happiness and preferences, even when WFH arrangements have been proven to only provide benefits to both parties (the issue is nuanced, I get that, but for the most part, work from home is very popular because workers largely prefer it.)
I’m being overly-dramatic here, but seeing one of the very few upsides to the pandemic being thrown away for no reason legitimately pisses me off. I’ve worked for myself for years now (as someone on the spectrum, I’m just incompatible with the illogical rules and weird workplace politics a lot of people either don’t have a problem with, or are able to more effectively tolerate, as my varied job history will tell anyone), but if work from home was the normalized approach, I’d have likely been able to hold a normal job. I have seen a majority of my friends return to the office, despite things working really goddamn well for both them and their workplaces during WFH. None are particularly happy about it, but also none of them seem to care enough to raise the issue.
My life was generally improved by the lockdown - i switched to grocery pickup (started spending less on impulse buys and eating healthier since i was preplanning everything the night before instead of just wandering the aisles), i really refined my home entertainment stuff to be perfect, I started to really ask myself “Do i need to do this or am i just following a script?” for social events, and found most of them were just mindless.
I feel the same way! Although the beginning of the pandemic was rough.
I get swooped up in my emotions pretty easily, and so the first month or so i was in a serious state of panic. I stopped reading the news daily after that, which helped a lot in stabilizing. And then i realized that my social anxiety issues were getting the space i needed - quite literally. Social distancing made grocery shopping much more doable for me, people didn’t want to meet up, and large crowds … just weren’t a thing. I miss that a lot.
Mine was more towards the end. When my previous employer started talking about people coming back to the office, I started job hunting.
I found a fully remote role that paid an extra 30%. Within a year of working for them, they have me a promotion that was another 25% on top.
In the middle of all that I met my now-fiancée.
So just in the last two years, everything has gotten better.
