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As creative professionals grapple with isolation and freedom, many are seeking new ways to balance solitude with connection.
It’s 6pm. You’ve been staring at screens all day, moving between tabs and applications, responding to Slack messages and emails. You’ve been highly productive; maybe more so than you’d have been in an office. But as you shut your laptop, a strange realisation hits you. You haven’t spoken a single word out loud today. Not one.
This is the paradox of working from home. The flexibility is real. The calm is genuine. But so is the loneliness.
Five years after the pandemic forced millions into remote work, creatives are grappling with an uncomfortable truth: we’re more digitally connected than ever, yet increasingly isolated. And for those who thrive on collaboration and spontaneous conversation, this shift has fundamentally altered creative life.
When silence becomes deafening
For creative director Emma Lally, the loneliness became existential. “I spent my first year freelancing from home, and whilst it kept outgoings down, it made me crazy with loneliness,” she recalls.
It also crashed her confidence. “Sat alone ideating often left me thinking: ‘Is this actually any good?’,” she remembers. “Things got very noisy in my head, so I eventually found a co-working space. On day one, I was offered a cup of tea, and I nearly burst into tears. Having people around is actually incredibly important.”
Beyond emotional wellbeing, there’s also the danger of career stagnation. As managing agent Bianca Bramham, says: “Post-COVID work-from-home life has sometimes made me wonder, ‘Have I met everyone I’m ever going to meet in my career?’ The opportunities are few and far between.”
Because let’s be realistic, the serendipitous encounters that used to drive careers now require deliberate planning. As Francesca Oddenino, co-founder of Vicine, explains: “I often don’t talk to a person in-person for entire days. I really love the off-moments, like when you’re having a coffee with people in person and a thought sparks. Not having to plan it, for it to happen organically, is a gift.”
Not all bad
WFH isn’t all bad, of course. For some, including introverts and busy parents, it can be transformative. Senior designer Nathalia Harris is one of them. “For years, I thought I had anxiety,” she recalls. “But actually, I’m a loud introvert, and I spent so much energy ‘being on’ in front of all my colleagues. These days, I enjoy my in-office days once a month, but value the tempo I set myself at home.”
Striking that balance, though, is something that artist Meg Fatharly has struggled with. “WFH has given me freedom over my time, my pace, my energy,” she says. “I can work around my nervous system instead of forcing myself through it, and that’s been life-changing. But the loneliness has crept in slowly and subtly. Not dramatic, just… persistent. The absence of casual connection, of being witnessed whilst you work, of sharing the small doubts and small wins in real time.”
Finding that balance, in practice, usually means experimenting with hybrid approaches. For freelancers, co-working spaces offer a professional environment without office politics. Vicky Tomlinson, co-founder of Kind & Wild, is making that shift right now. “Over the last couple of years, it’s become unexpectedly lonely, and I’ve struggled more with focus,” she explains. “I really miss the ‘buzz’ and the energy of being around other people who are working too. I’m about to move back into the city and will be looking for a co-working space to use a couple of times a week.”
Designer Oliver Jackson has taken a slightly different approach. “After WFH for almost five years, it became definitely lonely at times,” he explains. “So I’ve joined forces with some fellow freelancers to get our own studio space. We’re a varied bunch, including designers, a developer, an animator, a producer and a creative coach. We help each other out and get to vent over a good brew.”
Further strategies include scheduling intentional social time, creating rituals that mark work/life boundaries and seeking out in-person and online creative communities. If you’re looking for the latter, the obvious place to start is Creative Boom’s own community, The Studio.
When loneliness runs deep
For some people, though, these options only scratch the surface. Loneliness can run deeper than mere physical solitude, and addressing it requires more than proximity to others.
Hannah Beatrice, campaign manager for Marmalade Trust, which organises Loneliness Awareness Week (taking place on 15-21 June), emphasises the complexity of the issue. “Loneliness is a natural human emotion, but there’s still stigma and shame around this feeling that can stop us from understanding it and talking about it,” she explains. “We have a picture in our heads of what loneliness is—an older person living on their own, or someone who has very few friends. As such, we often rebuke and dismiss feelings of loneliness because ‘that doesn’t apply to me’. In reality, loneliness is a feeling we are all likely to experience at some point in our lives.”
These feelings, however, should not be ignored. “Loneliness doesn’t just affect how we feel emotionally; it can impact our physical and mental health, too,” Hannah points out. “Yet research from the World Health Organisation suggests that one in five employees experience loneliness during a typical working day.”
In this light, Loneliness Awareness Week aims to reduce stigma by fostering supportive communities through conversations about loneliness. Because sometimes the most important step isn’t finding a co-working space, but simply acknowledging how you’re feeling without shame or embarrassment.
The way forward
Five years on from the pandemic, and the results are in. Working from home has a lot to recommend it, but loneliness is a serious problem that can’t be swept under the carpet.
As creativity coach Ben Tallon reminds us: “Creativity is a shared condition. It is contagious. No individual success is achieved alone.” Some things, it turns out, just work better when we’re not entirely by ourselves.
For creative professionals especially, that means balancing the freedom of solitude with the vital energy that comes from being, occasionally and intentionally, in the same room as other humans.
It means that if you’re feeling lonely, it’s important to recognise and acknowledge it to others, without embarrassment or stigma. And it’s about recognising that productivity needs to be balanced with connection, for our careers as much as for our emotional wellbeing.