remote salaried work did me in

I remember when my 9–5 went remote in 2019 (yep—before that thing in 2020).

At first, remote salaried work felt like the win I’d been waiting for.

- No commute
- More flexibility
- Magnesium bath soaks while working (bless you, laptop trays)
- Time to hug and Band-Aid and be with my kids.

It felt more than good—especially because I’d already built bonds with my then-coworkers: Prosecco offsites, inside jokes, and that intimate knowledge of each other’s scalp smell that only comes from stuffing into the same privacy booth for a last-minute Zoom with HQ.

When I took a package there, I didn't feel like I lost my people. I had known them.

But in my next remote job, it all felt…off.

No memories. No shared history. Just flickering faces on Zoom—glitchy and flat. Differently attributed versions of Max Headroom, occasionally made human by distant toddler meltdown noises or a keyboard-traipsing cat splashing "67yuhjk8uijk9oiopl;k" across the chat.

Cue polite laughter for 3 seconds, then cut.

So I did what so many of us do:

I chased alive-ness.

I entered my “work-from-anywhere” phase: mid-week meetups in beautiful destinations I could pretend I lived in for a few days. I let 2-night getaways spill into next Monday if the kids were at Grandma's. And I willingly harbored a delusion that a change of scenery could inject life into the same draining 9–5.

It worked until it didn’t.

Because showing up to a team call at 2 AM local time from a drool-worthy villa with dodgy Wi-Fi doesn’t make you look adventurous. It makes you look scattered.

Eventually, the escapism ran out. And I was left with:

- Myself
- Slack pings that laced micro-ribbons of dread through my brain
- A messy home office I rarely left
- A work life with no pulse

And that’s when it hit me:

Remote 9-5 didn’t fix the sad parts of a salaried role.
It just shined a spotlight on them.
And it made them lonelier.

Traditional 9–5 drained us, sure.
But we could talk each other down.
We could meet each other's eyes.

- Feeling stuck? → Grab a coffee with Ellie.
- Need a laugh or you might cry? → Ask Ben in sales to re-tell you that basketball court vomit-slip story.
- Want to feel human again? → Squeeze Amanda’s hand and squeal over her latest puppy-kitten cuddle pic like it’s medicine.

(It was medicine.)

Or maybe vitamins.

A big squishy bag of vitamin B-complex, hung up and ported into your right arm, dripping life back into your brain, eyes, and heart.

I need to be clear:
As a single mom, remote work is right for my season of life.

But I don’t want:
- The full-time hours without kombucha tap chatter
- The 90-minute meetings without the chemical buzz of human proximity
- The soul-deadening accounting projects without the vasopressin (decidedly my favorite neurotransmitter)

If I can’t have those things?

Then I need to own my work, my time, and my terms.

I'm not afraid to admit that I do my best work—my true work in the world—alone.

But in 9-5? I need humans.

Do you?

xo,

Mary