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.
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.
Pandemic was great for me. I was able to get my Master’s degree online, which generally would have been looked down upon prior to the pandemic as not being a “real” degree or being as rigorous, but since everything was virtual, I was getting the exact same course material online as I was as the in person students. I quit my horrible job and I got a great remote job. The market was great at the time, so I managed to land a job where my company was headquartered in a very high cost of living area. They paid me the same salary as their other workers. Without the pandemic I never would have been considered. My husband’s job became remote as well. He and I have become way closer during the pandemic and have lots of time to spend with our kids and dogs. I will never go back to working in an office every again. I have severe social anxiety and my job is located in a state that would take me 2 days to drive to, so I am not expected to come to the office ever, except for once a year there’s a fun day where they go to do some kind of outdoor event. It’s really been so great. I also hate wearing business clothes (don’t even like putting on a bra), so I get to be comfortable. I see a lot of jobs offered are now hybrid or back to in person, and I refuse to respond to recruiters about any of those. I don’t care if they are trying to go back to the old normal. The old normal sucked. I still wear a face mask every where I go, and I haven’t had so much as a cold since early 2020. Three whole years without any sickness. And I just traveled out of town and sat in a plane full of people coughing all over. In “normal” times I would have just gotten sick right away and spent half my vacation fighting some weird bug I caught on the plane. In these times where I am super careful, wash my hands constantly and wear a mask when indoors, I don’t get sick at all. It’s amazing, I don’t know why we don’t keep doing it. Does everyone just like getting sick every flu season?
Yeah the pandemic improved my life for sure. My daughter was born literally right when everything locked down. I was able to work from home for the last few years and consequently I was able to be a much bigger part of my kids’ lives.
The improvement in my work-life balance was so huge that now I’m considering leaving my job since they are insisting on forcing people to come back to the office. I managed to get permission to delay return to office for a while, but it’s still scheduled to happen.
