The world stops when you don't leave the house.

Or at least it seems that way.

I work from home most days. This means great things for us: we save on gas money and/or me eating lunch out, I get a few chores and errands done sometimes in between job tasks, (it only takes a second to throw a load of laundry in), I can have dinner ready when Craig gets home from work, etc.

But there's a crazy amount of isolation that happens when you just don't SEE people. Sure I call and email people all day long. But I've always been a much bigger fan of face-to-face interaction.

Craig and I both have issues with the phone. I would rather drive over to a store to see what they've got than call them up and wait for some (usually clueless or ill-tempered) person to check on something for me. I would take a face-to-face meeting over a conference call any day. I'm working on getting over my issues, because in my business I have to, but it's still a challenge.

I had a nice breakfast meeting with my boss's boss last Thursday. It seems our team is going to be "restructured." It's possible we will have to reapply for our jobs. Some people, based on their previous performance, will be "less eligible" than others. If she and I had just had a phone call, I don't think it would have been the same meeting. She had prepared a little presentation handout to show me that kind of explained the whole thing. It was much easier to look her in the face and ask questions, and really gauge her response, than it ever would have been to gather all that over the phone.

So back to the original point... What if you don't see people for days and days? You end up in your own little bubble. Your own little self-referential hidey hole. A comfort zone of sorts where everything else outside of that is put on hold. It will still be there when you come out, and nothing will have changed.