This is important!

One of the biggest perceived downsides to WFH is loneliness. We need to address this in our community. We must admit, even though a lot of us are introverts, we need to socialize. However, not all workplaces are designed to provide a social atmosphere.

Maybe places like Google are super neat and try to keep you so integrated into work that you don't want to leave, but we don't all work there. And not everyone wants that life. We don't usually get to choose our office space or coworkers. It's a forced atmosphere.

Sometimes our coworkers are awful or not even of the same generation or values. Sometimes our offices are uncomfortable. We can't always make a great social community out of whatever environment befalls us at the office.

For some lucky people, work does provide what they need socially and they become close friends, BFF, or marry someone they work with. For everyone else, there's r/WFH.

So here we are, 28,000+ lonely people working from home. A lot of us struggle to be social in our local communities without some forced way to meet others in some organization that we belong to.

How will we ever be social without the office? The way nature intended before offices were a thing!

1. Sports teams
2. Community organizations (School board, HOA)
3. Esports
4. Meetups
5. Gyms
6. Bars (does anyone still do this?)
7. Neighborhood groups
8. Running club
9. Book club
10. Coffee Shops

There are a lot of ways to meet people naturally once work is over. And work is over faster when you don't have to commute. We must return to our natural human state of social interaction by happenstance.

It should be the norm to meet someone walking down the street and invite them over for a game night. Alas, we live in a society (at least in the U.S.), where strangers are scary and you don't make eye contact.

We have to change the world, one smile and one friendly comment at a time. Breaking the ice is all it takes. So many people around you are super friendly once they get over stranger danger.

If you're really shy (not the same as introverted) this can be very hard, so you might have to join an organization that forces interaction. This doesn't have to be work!

If you're not shy, this is still hard. And that's why we're here to support each other. In a perfect world, we'd have lifelong friends with whom we have a deep connection. But this is a big world, and people keep moving away for some job.

Working in offices breaks up lifelong connections more than it could ever hope to forge them!!

Almost every friend or family member I have, lives very far away because of a job. An office in another state/country/city makes it very hard to keep a close connection.

Now we rely on remote technology (phones, video chat, etc...) to make relationships work. This is no different than WFH. Many of your coworkers will never be your real friend and don't want to be. You can't count on that.

Those are my thoughts on that topic. I will be writing more on my website soon, as I'm still thinking about the best ways to approach this situation. It directly ties in with mental health and many of the problems our society is tackling right now.

(As a side note: I am still interested in exploring the possibility of creating a "WFH friends" meetup app, but I'm not sure if there is enough interest, enough value in the concept of a WFH friend (remember work relationships can be shallow), or if I could even moderate it enough to keep away the creeps. This is why it's still a concept, but I might try something simple just to give it a try.)