Change

So a work thing that I hadn't mentioned here is that my office needs to move. The landlords decided they wanted to convert the land to residential, so they're kicking us out in June 2021. We found out about this upcoming change a little over a year ago now. There was much discussion about where the new office would be, but nothing concrete happened for a long time.

Then, in April, my organization bought another company, also with offices all over the country, one of them in Oakland.

You may see where this is going, but in fact people were quite blindsided when it was announced today that the organization won't be replacing our existing office space. So we have a choice: go remote, or work in the Oakland office.

As far as my personal working life is concerned, the choice is an easy one. The other office is downtown, extremely close to public transit, and a reverse commute for me. Our current space is in a suburban office park, I have to drive, and it's not walking distance to anything. But this is going to be a much harder choice for some of my coworkers, and no matter what, it's going to change who I work with and how.

The weirdest thing of all is that we're still working from home, and it was recently announced that they don't expect us to go back into offices at all until at least next July. So regardless of what people decide, we'll never be the same community working in the same office again. And that makes me sad. Stupid pandemic.