I spent my last two years at Yelp working from home in Portland, OR, where I'd moved by myself. I started to go completely insane toward the end of my first winter. Being in the same room all day and having nothing ever change around me was much, much worse for my mental health than I had expected - prior to this, I'd never even thought about the concept of my own mental health, but this experience really brought it to the fore.

I tried a couple of coworking spaces, found one that I liked, and have been going there regularly since - my employer paid for my membership at the time, but I quit my job a year ago and it's still worth it to me to have a space where I can go every day to get out of the house and be _around_ humans, even if I don't socialize with them as much as I could.

I've always identified as an introvert, and used to fantasize about the idea of e.g. working in the top room of a lighthouse for a month - assuming you had a good Internet connection, you could get so much coding done there! - but it seems that being around people is much more important than I'd given it credit for, particularly in the winter when it's pitch black outside at 4pm and you're already kind of depressed by default.