Well, it had to happen. The world had to move on. After a year of discord and disconnect (and sadly, much sickness and death as well), we seem to be starting to get the better of Covid 19 and starting to see a way back to something resembling normal life.

And for me, something that resembles a normal life is a change to the arrangement of working from home.

It’s been pretty much a year since I started working from home. At first, it was more than a bit of a shock to the system. How was I supposed to get anything done? How was I going to motivate myself to stay at my computer, especially when there were so many distractions around the house?

But, before too long, I found myself getting into comfortable habits. I enjoyed the extra sleep time in the morning and the avoidance of the commute through busy traffic. And I found that I could be surprisingly productive, possibly more so than when I was at work.

And now, I’m making a change again. It’s time to get back to the office.

It’s not exactly a full time thing. For now, I’ll only be going back one day per fortnight. And possibly other times when required – I’ve already gone back for several meetings. On all other days, I’ll still be sticking to the old work from home routine.

Being back in the office feels pretty weird. After so many weeks of working from home, the office environment, which I had become so accustomed to, now seems kind of alien. Seeing people I’d only seen on a screen for the last year also feels kind of odd. Just as I had to figure out how to motivate myself in the new environment of work from home, I now have to figure out how to motivate myself back at work.

And there’s another reason it all feels a bit strange. I work in a big open space that’s usually humming and buzzing with people from a range of other teams. But in order to meet the requirements of social distancing, different teams are coming in on different days. So apart from my small team, there’s nobody else there. The whole space is like a massive, echo-y cavern, which feels a little off-putting. One other reason this whole back-to-work experience seems so surreal.

I suppose I’ll get used to this, just like I got used to work from home. In a few weeks, it will probably feel like the new normal. And once the other teams start returning as well – then that will be something else I’ll need to adjust to.