Moving on up

We just learned that my office will change locations in early July. I'm pretty excited about it: the building is a late 19th-century cookie factory renovated into a LEED-certified installation (and there are still few of those in the city). Everything is designed to be green and efficient and pleasant. They showed us the plans and the mix of old industrial architecture (brick walls, metal pillars, etc.) with well-designed modern elements all look fantastic. We'll have this awesome design-magazine loft kitchen, a lounge, all the workstations are open space, the windows will open, etc. We'll share the building with the city's borough office, as well as an architecture firm and an ad agency (great vibes). I do think your work environment can have a huge impact on your morale and your productivity.

There has to be a downside though. Right now I'm working on this small island just off of the island of Montreal (whereas the new office is in an up-and-coming neighborhood west of downtown), and skipping downtown traffic is a huge time-saver. My commute will now be longer both mornings and evenings, and there's no parking space there. This means M and I will travel together, like we did before we had a kid. I'm actually looking forward to that part (extra time alone to connect and talk about stuff!!!) and it will be greener and cheaper, but we will still have adjust to each other's schedule (a lot less flexibility), and it will be more complicated with daycare. I'm pretty sad because all in all it means LP will most likely spend an extra hour there every day = 5 fewer weekly hours of family time...