I realize my situation isn’t typical, but I’m retired and have dealt with depression most of my life.
The thing I miss most about work (yes, you really can miss work) is collaborative problem-solving. At Microsoft, we called it “teddy bear debugging”—basically, self-explaining a problem out loud to clarify your thinking. [1]
These days, when I’m stuck, I open Claude Code and “talk it through.” That back-and-forth helps me reason through technical issues and scratches a bit of that collaborative itch that helped keep my depression in check.
The thing I miss most about work (yes, you really can miss work) is collaborative problem-solving. At Microsoft, we called it “teddy bear debugging”—basically, self-explaining a problem out loud to clarify your thinking. [1]
These days, when I’m stuck, I open Claude Code and “talk it through.” That back-and-forth helps me reason through technical issues and scratches a bit of that collaborative itch that helped keep my depression in check.
[1]: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/w...