More people oriented than I realize

[shootingstar]

Since our office building's electrical and mechanical systems was destroyed by the flood, I'm part of 1,000+ employees told to work at home. We do have alternate sites for meetings, etc. This is going to be the whole summer. Yea, you heard me.

In my present job before the flood, I always did have the option to work from home once a wk. But I never took the option.
And I'm not totally convinced I need to at this time.

It's been nice to focus without distractions of open office layout with tons of other colleagues around one, yaaaking away. But my job does require collaboration and meeting internal clients. Some of the stuff is just faster face to face.

It's been weird (to me) since other employees do not give out their home numbers. So there's lots of email or Internet chat messaging. After a couple weeks, I feel intellectually stale. So quiet, working by oneself.

I've always considered myself a slight hermit in terms of my work style for all previous employers, but now I realize I thrive from time to time from informal work collaboration, chat, etc. While a portion of my career has been technically focused, a huge hunk of it has been client focused which is where I'm at my best because that's where the real interesting stuff happens.

In terms of learning new stuff, I know most definitely I learn best and thrive from learning and giving back to other learners in a training session. Sure I do sit for hrs. and hrs. learning new software and systems solo, but I learn faster when I share with others learning the same thing.

[shootingstar]

So what have you learned about yourself for those of you who work at home on the job? (Other than being disciplined, organized...)