I've worked from home a few years now, and whilst the upsides are well known I've personally found some challenges there too. Have you experienced anything similar? How did you deal with it?
My tale:
When the UK went into lockdown (along with everyone else) in early 2020 I started working from home full-time. For the first year I was with the same team I'd worked with for years whilst in the office, so nothing really changed except my location.
I switched jobs mid-2021 and the new team was much smaller. I work as a software developer, and this team was a grand total of three people including myself. We didn't have many meetings, only one a week, and except for being assigned new work I never interacted with anyone. It took a big toll on my mental health and I quit after three months.
I took an extended break from software development and started working on a plant nursery, driving tractors and tending plants - it was so much fun, but paid very little and ate into my savings a lot.
Went back to software development last year and thankfully manage things much better. I'm not a very social person, so it was surprising how important socialisation was to my mental wellbeing. I'm now part of quite a large team that speaks regularly, and when I next change jobs I know that this is something I need to look for.
I also have a garden now, so when the call of the wild hits me I go outside and sniff my tomato plants. I do miss driving tractors though.
I loved them, I miss them dearly, but no, I don't think they'll come back.
A lot has changed and the internet is not the same, for better and for worse. For one, it's just a lot bigger. You'd think that'd make it easier, but it seems to make it harder. There's too much noise for the communities to stand out, so what usually happens is one or two get huge and the others dwindle and die. Even just look at Lemmy, through no fault of your own, Beehaw is becoming one of the largest instances and it requires active work to spread the weight across the rest of the federation. People gravitate I guess.
Plus, because it's so much bigger, there's less of an identity in the spaces that do survive. Post in any reddit thread, then go to another. Chances are nobody'll be the same (except for a few superusers) so there's no real sense of belonging or community that the old forums had. Back then you trolled your friends, not strangers.