Monday, January 29, 2007

Craving human interaction

I work from home two days a week typically. And it’s great to be able to just get up put the coffee on…get my kids off to school and work in my pajamas. Isn’t that the ultimate goal… to work in your pajamas?

And don’t get me wrong… I LIKE working from home. I get some stuff done quicker. And given the nature of my job, it doesn’t really matter in most cases where I am physically, since everything is done by phone and email.

Last week, however, I was home 3 days instead of my usual two. And my husband’s been busy… so by the end of the week I REALLY needed to get out of my house, have some time alone where I was not working and was sans children and talk to someone over the age of 5.

I never realized how much not having live humans to talk to would effect me. I mean especially because I spend all of my working hours creating and managing electronic communication. And much of my own free time is spent communicating with friends and strangers through emails and blogs.

I guess there’s no risk of me becoming a shut in, huh?

But of course that got me thinking… In an age where we are constantly connected, how can we still feel so isolated? I can’t believe that I’m alone in this. It’s so easy to just be connected through electronic means but takes time and effort and coordinating of schedules to actually be in the same room as people you care about.

I feel that there’s this dichotomy of a sense of community (blog or otherwise) compared to this feeling of disconnect because I don’t see and spend enough physical time with some people who are important to me.

I definitely need both. I need to see people, hug them, and laugh out loud with them not just LOL with them.

3 comments:

Vinny said...

I worked as a file clerk for a mortgage company for 2 weeks. I couldn't take it. Alone in a room, filing all day, no one stops by, no one says hello.

It was the worst two weeks of my life, except for the summer I stayed home with Skippy. I loved the time with Skippy, but that much free time was terrible for me. But that's a different topic...

MapleMama said...

My hubby's new job is working all the time from home - and as someone who was a fairly quiet computer geek to begin with - add the fact that I can only understand a portion of his "tech talk' and you can imagine how lonely I think he is beginning to feel. You are certainly NOT alone here.

Lisa said...

Thanks... Some days are certainly better than others but I think when you work from home you have REALLY make an effort to seek out other humans.