Find a Remworker,
find a treasure.
I have an office in Milan. I really do -- a desk, a badge, colleagues. I could go every day. But I don't, because from Correggio it's hours of travel. I go occasionally, when I need to. The rest of the time, I work from home.
This makes me privileged, I know. I have the best of both worlds: the freedom of remote work and the option to go to the office when I need it. And yet -- this is the part I didn't expect -- I still feel lonely.
The paradox of having it all
When you tell someone you work remotely and feel isolated, the reaction is almost always the same. "Come on, you're free!" Or: "At least you're not stuck in traffic." Or: "I'd give anything to work from home."
They're right. About all of it. Remote work is a huge privilege. I don't have to wake up at 6 to catch a train. I don't have to sit through pointless meetings in a gray conference room. I can have lunch at home, walk the dog mid-afternoon, work in silence when I need it.
But there's a price nobody accounts for. And that price is loneliness.
Not the dramatic kind. Not the movie kind. It's a subtle, daily loneliness that accumulates. It's the Monday morning when you open your laptop and there's nobody to say "how was your weekend" to. It's the Wednesday afternoon when you have an idea and there's nobody in the room to share it with. It's the Friday evening when you close everything and think: who am I going out with tonight?
Conversations that don't work
You know what's the hardest part? It's not being alone. It's not having anyone who truly understands what you're going through. Because remote work is a world of its own -- and those who don't live it can't fully grasp it.
Try telling a friend who goes to the office every day that you feel lonely working from home. This is roughly how it goes:
End of conversation. Not out of malice -- your friend isn't a bad person. They simply live in a different world. Their struggles are real: the traffic, the endless meetings, the boss chasing them down. But their struggles are different from yours. And yours, to them, don't even look like struggles. They look like luxuries.
So you stop talking about it. You keep it all inside. And the loneliness grows.
The problem isn't being alone. It's not finding anyone who speaks your language.
The language of remote workers
There's a language that only remote workers know. It's made of small, everyday things that office workers can't understand.
The guilt of going for a walk at 3 PM -- even though you've already finished everything you needed to do.
The anxiety of being online to prove you're working, even when your work doesn't require you to be online.
The struggle to separate life from work when your desk is two meters from your bed.
Eating lunch alone -- phone in hand, scrolling, in a silence you didn't choose.
The endless calls -- the only human contact of the day, but so exhausting that by the end you hate them.
The "but do you actually work?" from relatives who still haven't figured out that yes, you can actually work from home.
If you read those and nodded at least three times, welcome. We speak the same language.
And if you look around -- in your town, among your friends, in your life -- how many people do you know who speak it? Probably few. Maybe none.
Finding your people
I was the first one who took a long time to figure this out. I worked from home, did my thing, occasionally went to the office in Milan. I thought that was enough. That those in-person days were sufficient to fill the void.
They weren't. Because showing up at an office every now and then isn't the same as having a circle. It's not like having people who understand your everyday life -- not just the Tuesday when you show up at HQ, but also the Wednesday in pajamas, the Thursday of the 9 PM call with the Americans, the Friday of silence.
What I was missing wasn't an office. It was a community. A group of people like me -- who work remotely, who live through the same things, who can look each other in the eye and say "yeah, I know, it's like that for me too."
Not on Slack. Not on LinkedIn. Not in a group chat that dies after two weeks. In person. At a table. Eating together, walking together, working side by side -- even if just for a few days.
Find a remworker, find a treasure. Because finding someone who speaks your language is rare. And when you find them, you don't let them go.
Why Remwork
Remwork was born exactly from this. Not from the idea of building a product, a business, a startup. It was born from a personal need: finding my people.
The idea is to build a community of remote workers who speak the same language. Who share the same challenges without having to explain them. Who meet in person -- in the experiences we organize, where you work in the morning and explore the territory in the afternoon. But also online, in the newsletter, in the group, in the conversations.
It's not a coworking space. It's not a retreat. It's not another LinkedIn group where everyone congratulates each other and nobody tells the truth. It's a place where you can say "today I didn't talk to anyone and I feel like crap" and someone answers "me neither, want to grab a coffee on video?"
If you work remotely, you're a remworker. It doesn't matter if you work from Bali or from the kitchen table. If you're a freelancer or an employee. If you love remote work or just tolerate it. If you feel lonely or you're doing fine but something you can't quite define is missing.
What matters is that you exist, that your experience is real, and that somewhere out there someone is living through the same things. Remwork is the place where you find each other.
Because find a remworker, find a treasure. And out there, there are millions of treasures. You just need to know where to look.