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The Return to Co-Working
Two years.
That’s how long it has been since I have had a file cabinet or a computer monitor or a room of one’s own, uh…a “dedicated desk.” Like millions, when The Great Pause hit, I moved from my WeWork office to my dining room table. After 20 years of freelancing, I didn’t share the same glee that most did for working from home. I had done it in the earliest years of my career, and I always found that the charm wears off quickly. What at first seems like boundless freedom to be boss-less and pants-less quickly turns into clacking your keys in your boxer shorts at 11:45am, un-showered and with no plan to see another human in the flesh.
But times, they were “unprecedented,” (may we never use that word again), so I did it, spending 2020 at home, on my laptop, my office files shoved into a box in the closet, my printer squeezed onto a bookshelf, and my monitor retired in storage. I called it MeWork or WeeWork. It’s New York. Apartments are small. It was either a table to work at or a table to eat at. When the vaccine came, I took cautious steps to open back up and venture out. That was also when the scathing WeWork documentary came out on Hulu. I wrote here on Medium in WeWork’s defense, feeling that most of us renters never paid any attention to the guru leading the venture. We were just here for the lime seltzer. If anything, knowing the full story behind the co-working…
