I've been working from home for almost eight years now. At first, it was just me and my dogs while my wife went to work. That was definitely hard at first, to stay focused and productive. Every day Alicia would come home and I'd be desperate to get out of the house, she'd usually want to stay in and chill, though, having just had a full day interacting with people at work. I eventually learned that walking down to the library or coffee shop a couple times a week helped some. But coffee shops aren't ideal workspaces in that they don't provide reliable internet, space, often too noisy and sometimes feel like you're not welcome to stay for a long time.

The past few years my wife started staying home and we have two kiddos now. Being able to work from home while raising a young family is a huge advantage logistically speaking and I am thankful every time I get to have lunch with my kids or take a 15 minute break to play in the backyard. But there's also a lot of distractions that are sometimes hard to ignore and the problems of professional isolation and like and reduced networking opportunities.

To this end I started working with a couple friends on a project last year called SpareChair (https://sparechair.me) to build a community of people who work remotely and so we can get connected and provide easy access to a lot of places to work together. We're mostly active in Brooklyn/Manhattan right now to gather feedback and learn how to make this work. Would definitely love to hear any thoughts you all might have on SpareChair, too.