During Covid, I spent all my time at home working. Call after call, meeting after meeting. I rarely made any kind of small talk unless it was the two minutes before everybody else joined.

I’ve been going back into the office lately (well, the plant) and it’s been … different. I still keep booking meetings hour after hour, so unless there’s something that ends early, I’m still busy all day. But during those times when I have had to just talk to people, I’ve enjoyed it. A lot.

I am fortunate to have a short commute to my home plant, so staying at home for work didn’t really make an impact on that. But being able to see people in person and practice my speech has been really good. I think the confidence I gained from all of those calls is carrying over nicely to the “real” world.

I am curious how others have been faring in all of this. Do you prefer to be at home and talk to people on your own terms, or do you miss when there were conversational possibilities all day?

I know for me a few years ago I would dread the office talk to some extent. It was exhausting. Trying to stay fluent, trying to stay competent, interesting, whatever. Now it seems there’s more to talk about, more to catch up on. I wonder if it’ll fade away again when we’re all back for a few months?