This week hasn’t been a standard, run-of-the-mill quiet week. It’s been frenetic, stressful, tiring, and oddly captivating. It was company winter party week.
Let me preface this properly: I’m not hugely social. Situations like these cost me a lot of energy. I need to consciously push past my natural shyness and introversion. I often feel out of place, I worry about how I’m perceived, and I tend to come across as a bit awkward and clumsy. I low-key dread these kinds of events.
That said, adulthood comes with a quiet realisation: you can’t keep running away from everything that makes you uncomfortable.
I’m not even going to go full motivational-poster mode and say “you need to step outside your comfort zone to grow.” Sometimes it’s not about growth at all. Sometimes it’s simply about respect.
In a company like the one I work for, organising an in-person event like the winter party is a massive effort. Logistics, cultures, dietary needs, accessibility, travel, budgets. It’s a lot. The people in the social committee put genuine care and time into making these things happen. Not showing up just because I feel awkward starts to feel less like self-care and more like disrespect.
I’m a software engineer. I work remotely. I’ve done so for most of the past six years. I’m clearly not a social butterfly, and I function best within my own rhythms and space. But I also have to acknowledge why these moments matter.
Remote work can trick us into believing that a standup call and a few Slack threads are enough for human connection. As much as it pains me to admit it, they’re not. Async communication always has a filter, a thin layer of distance that flattens nuance, tone, body language. There’s always a bit of middleware between people.
Something as simple as a winter party cuts through that.
Meeting the people you talk to every day, in person, in a different setting, changes things. You read expressions differently. You feel the vibe. You build a connection without the filter, and then Slack starts working better. The relationship is already there.
There’s also the underrated joy of letting your guard down a little. Laughing about that bug that haunted you for weeks. Recalling a ridiculous moment from a meeting. Talking about football, music, food. Normal human stuff. Personally, these moments gave me a huge morale boost. After both the hackathon and the winter party, I genuinely felt more part of the team.
And finally, there’s the cross-team magic. You meet people you’d never normally interact with. You put faces to names. You create bridges. You stop feeling like someone locked in a silo, just pushing tickets, and start feeling part of a wider organism.
All of this made sense rationally. Emotionally? I was still a mess.
The days leading up to the party were rough. I was tense, nervous, distracted. Productivity dipped noticeably for my standards. Travelling alone gave me far too much time to imagine worst-case scenarios. The night before, I even dreamt I walked into the venue and nobody knew who I was or why I was there.
And now for the anticlimactic ending, because you already know how this goes.
I went to London, mildly anxious for 24 hours straight. Had a small panic spike just before dinner. Put on my big-boy pants and walked into the venue.
A smiling colleague greeted me and handed me a glass of wine. I had a great evening. Met wonderful people. Spent time with colleagues I genuinely care about.
I woke up the next day with a mild hangover and a long journey home.
All things considered: brilliant success on all fronts.