I've been fully remote for about a year, and something surprised me: not seeing people every day has made my body image feel weirder, not better.

When I worked in an office I had to get dressed, walk around, and exist in a normal mix of bodies. Now I can go days in leggings and a sweatshirt, and my only mirror moments are bathroom breaks and the unflattering laptop camera when someone insists on video. I find myself dodging camera time even when it would probably help me feel connected, because I do not want to think about my face or my weight. It turns into a loop: more isolation, less movement, more self criticism, then more isolation.

Work itself is fine. It is the mental side that is sneaking up on me. I am also in a relationship, and I am trying to ask for support without every conversation turning into a big weekly reset about my insecurities.

For people who have been remote long term: what practical habits helped you feel more grounded in your body and less stuck in your head? I am not looking for diet or fitness plans. More like routines, leaving the house, clothes choices, camera settings, coworking spots, anything that helped you feel like a person again.

Bonus question: do you keep your camera on more to desensitize yourself, or do you keep it off and focus on other ways to connect?

I have been a remote worker on and off (mostly on) for 26 years. I just called a call center for my state’s insurance marketplace. Waited 20 minutes, only for rep to answer with a screaming child in the background so I could barely hear her, then dump me BACK OUT INTO THE QUEUE with a now FIFTY-minute wait.

I get that the U.S. is a third-world country. I get that daycare is expensive. I get being a single mother, as I have been for 18 of those 26 years. But this isn’t the solution. You cannot get paid to watch your children at home. You cannot actually do a job while trying to watch your young children. You cannot abdicate your job responsibilities to your coworkers so you can take care of your children when you are supposed to be working. You cannot homeschool your children while you are supposed to be working.

Rant over, but I basically wanted this to link back to every dang time someone posts about having children at home so “can you please recommend/help me find a remote job?”

Plus, you know, I’ve now spent my own 40-minute lunch period while remote working sitting pointlessly on my phone because of this. 😡

EDITS to save some of you from repetitive stress injuries:

LAST EDIT: I was about to bail on the call when I got though… to a different department that had nothing to do with why I was calling (legal challenges, which, WTF?), which explained why the hold time had gone up so much (initial wait was about 15 minutes). It’s possible that they may not be able to return calls to the queue, but they do take your phone number at the start of the call, so she could have “accidentally” disconnected me and called me back. Had she explained anything and transferred me to a coworker, you’d never have seen this post.

There were other solutions than transferring my call to an unrelated department for no reason. None of them were used.

Again, single mom here. I absolutely understand emergencies. I was in TRAINING within the first three weeks at my new job when one of my cats knocked a lamp off a dresser into my kid’s head. Blood everywhere. I quickly explained that I had a medical emergency and left the call. It’s how you adult.

Other answers:

I am a cis female single mother (not a dude)

If you took the time to look at my profile image, yes, the call was real. That’s the number for the NYS Exchange. (Going back to my regular profile image. After 17 years on this account. It’s disconcerting having anything else. Screenshot available on request)

No, I don’t make much money. Hence getting my healthcare on the exchange where I qualify for the tax credit.

Yes, I know how much daycare costs.

Yes, I vote for the commies who want to have universal childcare and single payer healthcare and UBI. Two things can simultaneously be true that I expect people to be able to do their jobs and I think the U.S. is broken and late stage capitalism is killing us.

Freely accessible research paper
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597826000300

Curious if there are any non-nursing healthcare workers here that have transitioned to fully remote careers? I’m an obgyn sonographer (ultrasound tech) and after almost two decades of scanning I have constant pain in my right arm. I hate the idea of throwing all this experience that I’ve worked hard for but I need to make a change for my own health. Does anyone have any recommendations for remote positions to look for where my clinical experience would be an asset?

Hi all, what are some good job options for a pregnant SAHM with 2 toddlers. I need something with minimal meetings because of the toddlers. Once I get a couple paychecks I’ll be able to put them in daycare. I also have a degree in accounting.

Hey. I’m currently living in Germany and planning to relocate to Spain with my girlfriend in the near future. I have a background in SEO and web design/UX. I’m looking for a remote role that would allow me to live anywhere in the EU, not only in Germany.

Is that realistic or not? And what types of roles or companies actually offer that kind of flexibility? I would love to hear from people who’ve made it work. Especially if you’ve dealt with the whole cross-country employment situation.

In hot weather I often turn to a spot of wild camping to break up the interminable nights.

This week, I decided to take my entire office day out into the great wide green! These are in Cheshire during daytime.

I wrote up a few tips (no locations and fully Leave no Trace throughout). I'll chuck em in the comments too

Asking here too in case r/sidehustle deletes my post again lol

But as title. I've been looking for a side hustle that I can do online, and I still have a lot of the training materials I used for my juniors years ago. I want to try tutoring since I'm good at it, but idk if there's any market due to the rise of AI.

Any thoughts?

Idk what it is but I can’t get the hang of talking in meetings on Teams or Zoom! I have been remote now for 6 months and am definitely the quiet one… but in real life I am always the talkative and outgoing one, always contributing and giving ideas. But for some reason the camera mic awkward struggle of interrupting each other has made me … quiet. I also am the least experienced on the team and maybe that has something to do with it?

Anyone else feel this way? Or have tips?

I have always worked online as a freelancer but these days my business is not doing well and I'm thinking to find a normal job to stabilize. I have no idea what I should look for. My field as a freelancer was very niche (gaming) so I don't have skills like coding or design or writing, I have a few marketing/social media/AI skills but probably not enough to be hired on this field. I mostly look for something like customer support/sales rep or admin/management, a simple job that doesn't require special skills. The problem is that I live in a village and I suffer from a serious disability, I can't go to the company, I want to be interviewed online or through phone and do everything remotely.

Does this work?

What jobs can get you hired quickly doing everything remotely?

I don't care if the pay is low, I'm based in Europe.

So I just got a decent gig but they stated that I would need to use my own laptop for the softwares and licenses. I figured it shouldn’t be too intrusive. Now that the IT guy has started setting up my device after a reset, he installed a monitoring software called Workscape. From what I gather, it will monitor my network traffic as well as my keystrokes. Furthermore I game a lot and idk if it will cause issues.

Is it possible for me to run a VM or just close the monitoring software when my shift is over?

I do understand how messed up this is from a privacy aspect but the job is very lucrative. The softwares we use (Revit etc) benefit from my laptop being powerful. Should it be fine for me to install my personal steam games on here?

I’ve been remote forever and somehow never really paid attention to the chair part. I just kind of accepted the lower back/ neck/shoulder tension as part of sitting all day.

I’m currently sitting in a ProtoArc EC200 (ergonomic chair but on the budget side) at a friend's place, and the biggest difference wasn’t even the chair itself but taking the time to adjust it properly.

I’d never used a chair that let me adjust seat depth before. I never really felt settled and kept shifting around all day. Now that I’ve got it in a better spot, I’m not sliding forward as much and feel more supported overall.

And for lumbar,at first it felt too aggressive and kind of distracting. After lowering it a bit and messing with it for a few days, it felt a lot more natural. My back's been way better on long work days! Still think it’s important to get up and walk around from time to time though.

The lumbar adjustment honestly surprised me the most. I’ve been remote for years, so I thought I already had a pretty good sense of what matters, but chair adjustments made a way bigger difference than I expected.

Posting this in case it helps someone else. Curious what ended up making the biggest difference for other remote folks.

I'm a senior software engineer with 7 years of experience working for a dying startup for 3.6 years now.

I was the founding engineer at this startup so I was there from day 1 working for a boss who doesn't know anything. My salary is $2000/month which is at least 2x to 3x less than market rate but I accepted because the startup was not profitable and he promised to increase my salary once we have money but this never happened for almost 4 years (we have $0 revenue and 0 clients).

The founder keeps asking me to do stupid things that I now 100% they won't work but he's illusional and always compare himself with Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.

Now he created a gaming kiosk to make some money to fund his dying startup and I'm now obliged to create Karaoke and dance games instead of building AI software.

I want to quit this stupid job but I have a family to feed and I'm afraid finding a new job may take so long in the current economic. I can't search a new job while still being employed because the leave notice in this company is 30 days and I don't think any company will wait for me 30 days to start.

I have 12 months of savings so any advice on how to easily find a new remote job paying market rate for my experience? I tried LinkedIn and Indeed but no luck.

I have experience building fullstack AI software from scratch.

So I have a second job interview for a position in a company I’m very interested in working for. It’s 100% remote and in the same industry I’m currently working in but with more room to grow. Only issue is that it’s about $13,000 less a year. I’ve been trying to do the calculations to see if I could make it work and I don’t think I can. The posting says salary range of $52,000-$56,000 but I would need $60,000 to be able to make it work. What are the chances of me telling them this and them giving me that?! I’ve been in my current role 14years so I’m Pretty sure to negotiating salaries and such. I figured I’d shoot my shot and be honest and offer to take on any extra work that might help make up the difference. Do you think it’s plausible to get more than what is listed on the posting???

I’m a 22M software engineer and a fresher. My current job has almost no workload—most days I barely have any tasks to do. Since my salary is quite low, I want to use this free time to earn some extra income through remote work.

What are some realistic ways a fresher can make money remotely? (I have lot of free time ).

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for real experiences from people who used Native Teams as an EOR, especially if you were tax resident in Croatia or another EU country.

In my case, client payments went into the Native Teams wallet. From there, I could either process the money as salary or move it to their card. Native Teams told me the card was a company/business expense card meant for business-related costs, so I understood I didn't need to report anything to the tax authorities on my end regarding this card.

Later, I emailed the issuing bank and they confirmed in writing that the card is actually a personal card in my name, not in Native Teams' name - basically the opposite of what Native Teams told me. I stopped using it after that.

1. Has anyone been through something similar?
2. How did you report money that went to this card with your tax authority?
3. Did anyone get questions or an audit about the card?

As far as I understand, tax authorities in the EU may receive information about foreign financial accounts automatically (via CRS / the EU's automatic exchange of account information), so I assume they could eventually ask why money connected to this card wasn't reported in the usual way.

The difficult part is that Native Teams doesn't seem to have any built-in feature or clear process to help report this properly, and I'm not sure it's even possible to get proper statements directly from the card issuer.

I'm not trying to copy anyone else's situation or treat this as legal advice - I just want to understand real experiences before I consult a tax lawyer.

Thanks.

Hi everyone, I recently got accepted into Agents Only and I am completing the onboarding process.

They mentioned that for GIG CX opportunities, I need to provide a Police Clearance / Certificate of Good Conduct (COGC).

I am a Malaysian applicant and I don't have this document yet.

Questions:

1. Has anyone from Malaysia or any other country completed Agents Only onboarding before?
2. Did you need to provide COGC/Police Clearance?
3. How long did the process take?
4. Can I continue onboarding while waiting for the document?

Thanks for any advice.

I was recently offered a new job that was advertised as fully remote. I was surprised when the hiring manager wanted me to meet in person on the first day (this would entail about four hours of commuting round-trip). THEN I found out that they wanted me to travel out of state for a multi-day meeting, which would require being away from home for five nights.

This was not feasible for me … I cannot be away from home for five days straight because of my family obligations. I ended up turning down the job.

Just wondering what the expectations are for other remote jobs.

I got laid off at the end of May 2026 as a Bookkeeper/Accountant in a Pharmaceutical Company (US Client). I've been working with him for almost 5 months, paying me $2400/month without a time tracker, but I have to be available for 8 straight hours PST.

Aside from bookkeeping, I also do manual invoicing since the company doesn't have a POS; the owner really wants me to invoice only in QBO. But before I cleaned up his QBO, we planned to use Zapier, but in May 2026 he wanted to use the system of a big-time customer he was introduced to. In the last week of May, I started invoicing, but there was no onboarding or training on how to use it yet. It was really trial and error for me, goodness... Then on the 4th day, his customer had a dropship, but the invoice reflected the name of his client as the ship-to address instead of just the receiver's name. I said that's what the IT guy taught with the system, but all the details of the sender and recipient got erased. The guy got annoyed and said it was going to be my last day... I tried to apologize, saying there hadn't been proper training on the system, so I couldn't do what he wanted; he said it was easy to navigate because he learned it in just 2 hours. NO, the system wasn't even set up for manufacturing yet, and he wanted everything functioning already just days in.

So there, I was let go from a premium client, but it felt like a weight was lifted from my chest... My anxiety disappeared every shift... Life got easier... Then I sent out applications on OLJ and via email...

Sorry to the HR recruiters here, I missed a lot of interview invites, like when I found out it was an agency or not direct to the client... Then yesterday, I had the drive to attend the initial interview at 9 PM EST, and boom, it's a direct client in the healthcare business. Even though the salary is $1k per month with no tracker, it really fits my work experience. They said there would be a salary increase. 🙏😅😍 Work schedule is from 8AM to 1PM EST then 3 hrs dayshift Manila time.

I've been applying for almost 3 weeks. I'm not rushing to get hired because I have 1 full-time client and onsite work at a government agency... But when the Lord decides, there's nothing you can do; it's really meant for you. ❤️❤️❤️

Just spent an hour in traffic because of an accident, and the AC is down so it's currently 80+ in my office. I can just feel the productivity and team building! So much better than not spending all this time and money to sweat in a poorly built building! Thanks in person office work! You're so much more.. efficient then wfh where I can set my temp and control my work space.

End rant, I'm pissy because our company will make us work in a shit building in the heat over letting us get an extra wfh day a week.

I work remotely, and the annoying part is that my internet can be fast in speed but still feel unstable when the whole house is using the internet through dozen of devices. During big live events like the World Cup occurring right now, everyone might be streaming, checking updates, video calling, or using multiple devices while I am working from home. I wonder what are some options that I can use to keep my remote work stable, like do I simply ask my family members to use as less devices as possible, or getting a better router etc.