What do I miss about the workplace?

Well, I'll start by confessing that one thing I don't miss is the actual work. Or traffic jams. Or pointless meetings that drone on forever and could have been handled with a succinct email.

But when I decided to step down from my full-time job in education to focus on writing novels, I did not realize how much I'd miss certain aspects of working outside the home. What I'm finding surprises me, and I thought I knew myself pretty well.

I still do some consulting for a school I worked for a while back, and I went over there this week for a meeting. I felt like a cultural anthropologist, observing the busy people, rushing around campus. Busy little bees, buzzing as they went about, foraging for food, trying to squeeze a phone call, a bathroom break, or a brief conversation into an already jam-packed day. 

Not too long ago, I was one of them: tired, stressed, dreaming of the moment when the days would be mine and mine alone. So it shocked me that I felt a touch of envy. They looked so alive. So animated. So vibrant. So filled with...what was it? 

Purpose. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not going back to working full time anytime soon. I appreciate what I have, and the fact that I have a supportive spouse who encourages me to follow my dreams.

But here's what I miss:

I miss my coworkers. I miss social interaction. I even miss the complaining, and the occasional disagreement. And I miss my guilty pleasure: a good piece of office gossip. 

I also miss the validation work gave me. I was good at my job. Some might say I was top in my field. I was good at work like I was good at school, which is probably why I was a student into my early forties (it was a doctorate, but still, I was a little too old to get excited over an A paper, and I still got excited). 

Being an author is tough on the ego, and although I have a ton of great reviews and loyal readers, and for that I’m grateful, the occasional scathing review really stings. Even if you get a reprimand at work, which I swear I don't remember ever getting in my entire career, most of the time, you're not told that you are the absolute worst person in the world at what you do, which is what a heartless review says to an author, even the rich and famous ones. 

There's also not much validation working inside the home. It's not like I have a mean family. They are perfectly fine. But if I'm expecting my husband to say, "Hey the floors look great today, honey. And I noticed that you washed the sheets AND the comforter. Way to go!" Or if I'm expecting my daughter to give me an A+ in babysitting and tell me I'm the best newly minted grandma on the island, it's not going to happen. 

Not that they did any of that before I stopped working, but back then, I didn't care. Someone was paying me, year after year. Even if nobody praised me for my work day in and day out, you could assume you weren't doing the worst job on the planet, since they kept you around and continued to put money in your bank account.

So that's what I miss about the workplace, my friends. The community. The connection. The shared sense of collective misery. The validation. The free coffee.

And now I think I'll go binge watch a season of The Office. What the hell? There's nothing I really have to do.

See what I mean?