Wiebe de Groot |April 24, 2020
My experience with starting to work remotely has certainly been one of the very best opportunities I’ve had so far. It changed my life, for the better. I’ll gladly tell you the short story of how I went from an in-office agent biking to the station every day, to exchanging my bike for snow boots when I reached my new home.
I found myself at a crossroads before I started to work at 5CA in early February 2019. I was uncertain about the future, and what it could bring. I started working in-office, in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Work was going steady, and I was enjoying the project I was working in at the time; Writing and gaming are high on the list of things I enjoy, and I found myself genuinely happy with my position at 5CA.
What really changed my lifewas the fact that I met someone the year before, and she lives across the Atlantic, in a country 240 times as large as the Netherlands; Canada. Though we started off as friends, and good friends at that, at some point we both realized that just being friends was not going to cut it. We started a long-distance relationship, and as all those who have been in one will know; This can be quite hard. Nevertheless, we were happy, but what now? A question that kept us both up, with good reason.
And then I realized: “5CA might just be able to make this happen, after all, Work From Home positions are a very real thing.” Slowly setting things in motion, I started consulting my Project Lead about the various possibilities, and what could potentially be realistic. We went through the motions and the option started to seem more and more real by the week.
After finally meeting her in May 2019, we decided that this was better than we could’ve expected, and we wanted to go for it! 5CA set the cogs in motion, and in mid-July it was possible. I went from an in-office Agent in Utrecht to a Work From Home Agent in Ontario, Canada.
Though the time zone was something to get used to, and the sudden shift in the work environment was quite the change (Looking at you August! My girlfriend’s cat has been my loyal colleague ever since I moved here), I managed to adapt just fine. Work has been better than ever, and I dare say that this all would not have been possible, if not for my job at 5CA.
And now I’m writing from Canada, more than half a year later, at a crossroads no longer. Working from home has made this monumental shift in my life possible, and I know for sure that this all would’ve been a lot harder, I dare say almost impossible, if not for this opportunity.
This last year brought on quite the excitement, and if you would’ve told me lastyear that I’d be working in Canada, in a nice and cozy apartment, a cat on my lap, and the most wonderful girlfriend in the world; And this all in the span of a year? Well, I can wholeheartedly tell you that I would’ve most definitely been more than a little skeptical, to say the least. And yet it did happen.
