

The kettle clicks off and the kitchen is silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator. I lean against the counter, coffee in hand, watching a streetlight flicker through the window. It’s 6:47 a.m., and I’m rehearsing the day—a series of Slack pings, a missed call from a co‑worker I never quite heard, the feeling that I’m both present and elsewhere. The house feels full of ghosts: the chair where I used to eat breakfast, the desk that now doubles as a conference table, the hallway that once led to a commute. I’m not sure whether the ache comes from being away or leaving something behind.

Later, I walk into the office after a month away. The glass doors slide open and the air is thick with the murmur of typing, occasional laughter that seems to come from another world. I pass a row of empty desks, each a small monument to a routine that never settled. A missed call on my phone—my manager’s name flashing, then vanishing—reminds me of the office’s invisible expectations, the weight of being seen and being unseen. The contrast is jarring, not because one place is better, but because each carries its own quiet toll.

Both the kitchen—where I work remotely—and the office have a cost that isn’t always spoken about. The discourse around where we work tends to treat one setting as harmless, as if the emotional price of the other were zero, and that simplification makes the argument feel clean but incomplete. I’m not arguing for a return to the old normal or an endorsement of working elsewhere; I’m suggesting that we acknowledge loneliness, blurred boundaries, and subtle hierarchies of presence in any space. Only then can we weigh what we actually sacrifice, rather than what we think we should.