Dan wasn’t a party a party animal. Never an expert in small talk, at social gatherings he either kept to himself or found a soulmate for a one-on-one chat. At work he was more attuned to planning business strategies in his own headspace than to the interactive ‘brain-storming’ sessions his management periodically called. His firm had once run psychological tests on its senior managers and when his results came back as ‘strong preference toward introversion rather than extroversion’ he agreed: the test had nailed it. He enjoyed his own company, and at week’s end, preferred to skip the firm’s TGIF drinks session and head off for a quiet restaurant dinner with Sally, on a baby-sitter-provided leave-pass.
But this COVID experience had cast a cold shadow. Working from home, he had become edgy, easily provoked to anger, negative. It came to him slowly that, introvert he may be, he was missing human contact with work colleagues. Terribly. The Zoom sessions, the new world of solitary work-from-home that was touted as liberating and flexible, were no substitute for the busy office environment that had been his grounding until just a few months ago. He now realised how important his chatty twice-daily walks around the open-space office had been. He followed this self-imposed discipline as a recommended ‘management by walking around’ strategy but now he saw how critically important it had been for his own wellbeing. Surprising as it was to him, he had to concede he needed work colleagues around him; he could not thrive in isolation and his productivity had hit rock bottom.
But what options did he have? He was aware he was getting on Sally’s nerves. It was draining plying a surly husband working behind the study’s closed door with periodic coffees while she continued to cope with the kids. And when he emerged after a day’s solitary work, they found little to talk about: no point asking, ‘How was your day?’
Burnside Writers Group 