I swear I thought that being part of the #bloganuary challenge would be enough to get me into the habit of writing more here. But then, the whole Developer Apprenticeship thing happened and threw me off a bit. Mostly because I started another blog to help me study (Rosie Codes), where I share things I have been studying. But also because of all the courses I’ve been taking, and while the work is 100% amazing, it’s been emotionally draining.

Moving from a position where you knew what you were doing and was doing it well to a position where you have no clue most of the time it’s a bit exhausting. But I guess it’s either this or be stuck in my comfort zone forever, and this is something I don’t know how to do.

But, this is not what I’m here to talk about.

I spent most of the past two (pandemic) years challenging the argument that what was happening during the pandemic was the “Remote Work” experience. It was not. One of the best things about working from home (or anywhere) is the ability to control our environment, as I mentioned here.

Being stuck at home, not having a proper work setup, having to deal with a bunch of adverse situations is not how remote work was supposed to be.

But, thanks to science and vaccines, things are slowly going back to normal, and this past weekend felt a lot like the before times.

It started on Thursday when I headed to Toronto for a really nice lunch with @correliebre and two other colleagues I had not met before.

This all started when one of them sent a message in our #GTA Watercooler channel in Slack asking if anyone was up for lunch. It had been a while since last time this happened and, while it was still only four of us, we had a great time.

From there, @correliebre and I headed to Jimmy’s Coffee to co-work in the afternoon. The place is awesome. Small, cozy, great internet, delicious coffee and they have GF (and vegan to whom it may concern) options in their menu.

Then, on Friday, Chrissie and Chris came over to spend the weekend, on Saturday was time for @correliebre, Miguel, Jeff and KP to join us. We had an amazing time, went to Niagara Falls and even went to the Niagara’s Fury boat.

On Sunday, it was Damianne’s turn to join and we also had a really great time co-working and exploring the area.

Sure, we are still wearing masks, we are still a bit anxious about the whole thing. It’s not normal again, but it’s way closer than what it was in the past two years. It felt normal and it felt amazing.

We finally have some control over our environment. We can finally choose again if we want to be alone or enjoy the company of other people. We can finally choose to work from a busy cafe, or from a park or by the beach or stay home.

We are having team meetups again (for work, I mean, not like this one). My team is meeting later this month. Some of us are travelling for the first time as an Automattician, some of us are travelling for the first time out of the country, some are travelling after a long time. It’s been really good to be able to experience the distributed culture in our company to the fullest.

I’m super excited to meet part of my team in person (I’ve met some before at WordCamp EU) and I really hope things keep getting better from now on.