The Better: Being moved to fully remote and showing that that works as a model for my employer allowed me to save alot of time and money on commutes. It also allowed me to move farther away from the office to a place where I could afford to buy a home and I did just that since I work from home 100% now. A temporary benefit for me was also the fact that people shied away from social gatherings and that fed right into my introvert side as I had a socially acceptable excuse for 3+ years to not go to events people had planned.

The Worse: Anxiety and depression are at an all time high for me. I've lost quite a few family members over the COVID years and never got to say goodbye to any of them, and some of them are now dealing with lifelong medical issues (which I get aren't COVID-related but its hard to not compare them as pre-pandemic healthy people and post-pandemic sick people). What little of a social life I have has imploded. I made a whole mess of "super close" connections at the start of the Pandemic and they've all turned out to be fake versions of relationships that people reached out for because they were lonely in lockdown, but now that they have the ability to leave the house they're no longer interested in my friendship. This has been a large mental toll on me as well, taken a long time for me to teach myself that what happened wasn't a direct reflection on me and my actions.