Socialising

It certainly an indicator of the major downside to being a fully-remote contractor, that I’m finding it harder than ever to build up my social life. I had about four or five years of working from busy(ish) offices. Firstly from Monotype’s Bergmannstraße location as a freelancer, then an employee. Then for a most of 2019 for Horizn. Friendships as well as working opportunities arose from those places. And indeed the line between those two has turned out to be pleasingly fuzzy.

I have few regrets about becoming a solo worker. I’ve made some good friends and connections through the video call screen – relationships that I’ve found very easy to be open within, that have grown into solid, productive working partnerships.

The thing that’s missing is the social serendipity of a workspace shared with lots of other people. Am I kidding myself that I ever really took advantage of that when it was available to me though? For sure! I tended to keep lunch breaks to myself. And as an external contractor, there were few occasions for me to actually work with the people around me, at least to start with.

All of this is to say that I’ve since learnt that I must be more proactive, and less complacent and generally worry less about using any kind of work context to make new friendships.

And I'm going to get better at using networking events to just generally grow my friendships.

This means networking without necessarily trying to win gigs from people, or sell a service, or promote my name or whatever. Social connections will probably lead to work connections which will certainly lead to new social connections and on and on and on we go…

I’m looking forward to seeing who’s out there!