I struggle with isolation at work. It really escalated during the pandemic. I run a small team and we're often isolated from everyone else, except the client in front of us at any moment in time. Most the work is indirect.

Coming back into the office, its a struggle to integrate back into a culture that, for me, appears to no longer exists. I'm trying to reconcile if this is my own doing, or if something else has changed. I look around and many of the faces in the back office are new. There's no love coming from the middle or front office or top brass.

To me, at this point in my life, I don't want to be monk. I want to feel like I belong, I want to feel like a valued member of a community. I've worked in financial technology and back office operations most of my career. I doubt I will find any of that in any back office these days.