Good Morning, Manhattan: My First Day Back in the Office

By Liesa Witt · Published 2026-09-07 · Updated 2026-09-07

My first day back in the office after years of remote work made me nervous. Here is my honest take on returning to in-person routines in Manhattan.

8:30 am Good Morning Manhattan

It looks like an ordinary morning in Manhattan.

It's 8:30 am EST and I'm writing from a cute coffee shop in Manhattan, an hour before my first proper office day since the pandemic forced me into working from home and my choice of work kept me there.

Thus, this morning is very far from an ordinary one because this day marks a return to a life where I actually work with humans in person. No virtual meetings, no time-zone differences or oceans are separating me from my coworkers.

I am not going to lie, I am equally excited and nervous. I am asking myself if you can forget how to act around people, your coworkers in person? It seems like a trivial question; however, it has been so long since I interacted with colleagues in person or actually stepped foot into an office building.

Change without loss, again

I keep coming back to that phrase because this is exactly the situation it's for.

The change that happened: one thing ended, another began, and I'm sitting in a coffee shop about to walk into a room and start something new yet familiar.

Working with people in person. It is wild to me that remote work has become my new reality, my new normal, while not so long ago I dreamed about not having to go into the office 5 times a week.

In about 30 minutes I'll walk into an office and spend a full day in a room with other people. My first time since the pandemic quietly rewrote what a working day even looks like. It's a small thing. Nevertheless, it makes me feel a little uncomfortable, excited and nervous. It somehow marks the end of a chapter I didn't want to finish writing but needed to for the sake of slowly making my way back into a more regulated and healthy way of working.