On working from home

A few people, mostly coworkers, have been asking me how I like the new arrangement of working remotely. Well, it's too early to give any sort of long-term feelings because I've only been away from the office for a month, one week of which was spent on vacation and another working at a client site, but I can tell you it's been sort of a love/hate relationship so far. Actually, "hate" is too strong of a word. Let's say it's a love/dislike relationship.

The convenience of being able to roll out of bed and begin working in less than 15 minutes can't be beat. It also gives me the opportunity to talk to myself all I want, play music over speakers rather than headphones, get minor chores done around the house during random coffee breaks, and slip easily between modes of intense concentration and slacking off, depending on the urgency of my duties. Yes, it's easy to be distracted when the work is slow, but I make up for it by working hard other times with minimal interruption from talkative coworkers. My schedule has been on more of a get-what-needs-to-be-done-done basis than a firm following of the clock. I'm still putting in 8 hours between 6:00am and 3:30pm, but I spread out the hour and a half of break time over the course of the day. This is my preferred style of working; it's an echo of my college days, when I would study all day and all night but take plenty of breaks. The process takes longer over all, but it's more fun while it's happening.

Of course there are downsides to my arrangement too. Maybe it's because we're living in a studio apartment, complicated by the fact that my own home office furniture is still in storage, but I'm feeling a little cramped. The desk I'm using is too small for me to spread things out on, the chair isn't extremely comfortable, and I'm not getting good cell phone coverage. But these are temporary, minor drawbacks. A bigger concern is the frustration of trying to communicate with people all over the country. Time zone issues aside, I'm a visual person, so working over the phone is difficult. I prefer the email and instant messaging mediums, which are typically slower and less likely to elicit a response at all, but they allow me the opportunity to be more thorough in what I want to say and receive in conversations. But the fact remains: sometimes I want to drop by somebody's desk and bug them in person.

By the end of the day, I'm usually pretty anxious to get out of the house. So far there have been plenty of opportunities. At the very least, I get out for a jog or bike ride... and those activities have never felt so good. My social interaction doesn't extend much past R and Facebook (I finally signed up!) these days, but for some reason I'm fine with that for now. It's hard to jump into making new friends right after leaving some good ones behind, but it will happen in time. We've done all this before.

So I'm not exactly laying out on a beach with my laptop every day, as I joked before we arrived, but I do get to see the California sun often enough. It's still quite high in the sky when my work day ends.

Oh yeah -- I don't know where the specks of dust in photo above came from. I do use that keyboard every day, I swear.