About a week ago, it suddenly dawned on me that my client in New York would not be particularly discommoded if I were sitting in a comfortable armchair with my feet up during the workday, keeping the dog company, rather than sitting bolt upright in a desk chair in an office, keeping nobody but myself company. No dress code (shoot, if I wanted, I could work in jammies - aren't all bloggers clad in jammies?), and I can get odds and ends of house-related stuff done in the times I used to spend standing dumbstruck before the office candy machine. Suddenly, Saturday doesn't have to mean "Laundry Day"! I might even manage to get dinner made in the little snippets of time not spent driving to or from work. This is pretty damn cool!
There are days that I'm not the world's biggest fan of modern technology (perhaps I know too much about how it's held together with chewing gum behind all the smoke and mirrors, or perhaps my work with it has been an instrument of torture for too long), but this isn't one of them. I have a broadband Internet connection and a portable phone that comes equipped with both a speakerphone option and a mute button, and apart from the phone number used to talk to me directly (which, frankly, doesn't happen all that often), nobody can tell that I'm not in an office building. They can't hear the fire crackling in the background, or even the washing machine running. A couple of days ago, though, they did hear the dog. She tends to get a bit excited by people wandering through our front yard, and she often mistakes the neighbors' yard, where they are building a mother-in-law suite and have construction people about, for our yard.
Another advantage to working from home is that the office, quite frankly, is pretty depressing these days. I'm an old-timer with my employer, and have lived through about 3 years of layoffs and dwindling contracts. Another of my friends is leaving this Thursday - the client opted not to renew him for another 6 months and there's nothing else to do that doesn't involve extensive travel, so he is being "separated" (I guess that sounds kinder and gentler than "severed", especially given the times we live in) and sent on his way with a generous severance package. Being at home, I don't see all the empty offices where my friends used to sit (for that matter, I don't see my own office, which used to belong to a very close friend and mentor before she was found to be redundant and expensive last spring). At home, I'm surrounded by my stuff and a bunch of friendly furry animals, and no ghosts at all. Much pleasanter.
Lunch is a better thing when working at home, too - it's way too much trouble to cook myself a double cheeseburger or quarter-pounder with anything at all, but that was the no-effort option when I worked at the office. I can make myself a sandwich or some soup and not worry about where to throw away the knife to avoid food smells or who used the microwave last and what that green stuff on the ceiling of it is. At home, I know what the green stuff is. I put it there myself.
All in all, this seems to be a good deal. Guess I ought to consider rescuing my desk plant one of these days.
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