An Open Letter to My Best Pal As I Return to the Office

Yeah, I know Riley. It's going to be ruff. Real ruff. Maybe more for me than you. After a year of working from home, I am heading back to work at the office soon. It's been super convenient and productive for me. It's most certainly been the next best thing to heaven for you.

Your days of snoozling have been broken up by walks, games of fetch, and general snuggling on command, which have in turn (sometimes) offered me the work-life boundaries I've needed. Not to mention alerting me to what you sometimes thought were the would-be intruders who just turned out to be friendly neighbors on a stroll (or the delivery or garbage man.) You meant well and I love you for it.

Talk about "ruffing it". You don't know anything about the reasons why I've been home all this time, and for that, you're lucky. You just know the extra attention and bonding were downright glorious.

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Sure, I'll be home at night and during the lightning-fast weekends (if I'm lucky, even late afternoons as often as possible) but I know it won't be the same. The separation anxiety will be brutal for a while, but I know you'll adjust. We've done this before, and now we have to do it again. At 8 years old, you're all grown-up and an old pro at this. You'll have that much more energy to play when I come home because your routine of sleeping part of the day will become sleeping all day.

Let's make the absolute most out of the next few days I get to continue remote work, because, although your bark is much worse than your bite, figuratively speaking, the same might not be said for me for a while. Lucky for me, I know you'll be there waiting to help me chill out.

It might help if I took a few practice runs by actually leaving the house once in a while besides going grocery shopping. Baby steps.