July 28, 2011
Salsa coma.
I work from home, which means I have a lot of…freedom [shudder]. Horrible, limitless, malaise-inducing freedom. For instance, my current outfit consists of boxer briefs and slippers, I just ate a bunch of salsa straight from the jar, and in about five minutes I’m going to lie face-down on my bed as a reward for writing this. All kidding aside, I will say that working from home does have its perks. I mean, the break room is the size of my apartment! Also, I can eat unlimited quantities of salsa, guilt-free, which is a nice change of pace for – oh, who am I kidding?! I hate freedom! It sucks! How I long for the halcyon days of Orwellian office oppression (c-c-c-combo!). Back when procrastination was a punishable offense, and coffee was used as a chemical motivator, and I actually had to wear pants! Sweet, sweet tyranny! Where have ye gone, mine ornery horn’ed muse? Why, I can remember how I wasn’t even allowed to go on Facebook! Can you imagine?! No Facebook! Actually, that reminds me… [opens browser, checks Facebook, closes browser, reflexively opens browser, checks Facebook again, closes browser]. What was I talking about? Cats? Well, Wife and I have this cat, named Cat, and let me tell you, he is one feisty feline!
I can relate to your post since I also work from home. It’s kinda boring sometimes but the fact that you have the freedom to choose what time you wanna start your day is reason enough for me to stick with this kind of life. Lol!
Home is home and office is office lol !
I would never go back to working in a cube farm unless I absolutely had to.
I don’t need the “high school” drama, long commutes, managers who prefer baby-sitting their subordinates to performing actual management duties and noisy neighbors who won’t shut up.
I do not miss office life.
I worked from home for a long time and I loved it– get up, no commute, start early, finished today’s work? off to the gym. And yes I’d often work late and weekends but it was more than rewarded by the afternoons in the gym — or the occasional days when I’d just NOT work – - I felt like I’d skipped school.
Although working at home sounds like a dream job destination compared to being confined within the gray walls we call a cubicle, I would surprisingly prefer the cubicle. It is not necessarily the location where your desk and computer is placed, but it is the fact that you have an opportunity to interact with the world around you. Talk to your co-worker by the cooler, meet new clients, go out to lunch with a friend or sit at the local coffee shop and people watch during your break, just the fact that you get to be out there enjoying the outdoors is enough to want to work outside from home. Let’s not forget that salsa is portable, no matter where you work just take that jar with you and never let it leave your sight!
Best of luck to you! Thank you for your intriguing post!
If you don’t mind, I just started my own blog recently and I would like to post the link along with my comment! It’s http://www.logicmeetsreason.wordpress.com, I invite you and your readers to take a look at it, comment, and subscribe!
I also work from home. It can get boring, but it is very convenient for my husband and I transportation wise. And I’m in my jammies all day too. There are some days that I don’t get to get on facebook (this keeps me busy on my slow days). When I’m not on all day, I start getting text asking if I’m ok. It’s funny. Oh and I loved how your mind wondering after quickly checking your facebook. :0)
well.. you could consider not working from home :’)… But hey, me and my crazy ideas
I love chunky salsa!
Man, that was great. I really like your style, it actually kind of reminds me of my own. Check out some of my stuff and keep on truckin’, good sir.
Amen, to the responses … I couldn’t add more.
Maybe we should trade places.
Oh my gosh. I discovered today that I spoke to three– count em– three other living human beings in person today. The rest were on facebook. We talked about deep things… sex and God, among other things. But still, I ended the day feeling a little lonely.
I do most of the work I love right here at my computer. Sooo glad to be able to do it. Not like seeing three hundred high school students every single day… Oh that’s right, in a normal year, I’d be out playing in the summer sunshine!
Love the post. totally understand. And I can stay up past midnight when I’m working on a project! How’s that for healthy?
envy you guys. would love to work from home, but that’s the sort of thing that my boss frowns upon
Well, I hate schedules, so freedom is a good thing for me. But it’s a double-edged sword. You have to have some kind of structure in your life, or you’ll never get anything done.
Haha I cracked up with your wittiness. I’m a freelance writer too, so my job also has no “definition” (9to5 a no-no). We love freedom!
I hope you keep some Tums next to that salsa, my friend. I know what you mean, though. I even had a dream about being given a cubicle of my own again. In my dream, I was very excited. Actually, it was a cubicle in a Navy office, so it even came with pants. Khaki pants. Very nice.
Freedom can be a wonderful and dangerous thing. Look at the Lord of the Flies boys.
Freedom can be a powerful and dangerous thing. Look at what the Lord of the Flies boys.
Freedom is much harder than constraints, I agree absolutely!
Working from home’s cool, I loved it. You get the freedom and flexibility to do what you want when you want to. I’m sure for me, excessive freedom is not going to kill me. I once worked in a hospital lab, work starts at 8.30am, lunch at 1-2pm and knocks off at 5.30pm, if you’re placed on night shift, it is even more terrible, complete torture from 9pm to 8am.. You might have to come in early, go for late lunch, and end your shift late if there are staff on leave or too much samples to process all just in order to “save the patient’s life”
I could really take a break from this grueling job by working at home for the next few months…
i guess whoever said we always want what we don’t have is true…
we dream of working at home and having all the “freedom” when what we have is an 9 to 5 job in a cramped office. but, when we do get that stay at home job, after a while, we tend to miss the hustle and bustle of the “real” world. LOL. oh well, staying at home has it’s perks. and, if it were up to me, i would rather have the freedom of working in my own home. after all, wouldn’t you love to be able to suck at a spoon-full of peanut butter while you work?
I was working from home for 1.5 years before getting a full-time office job just a few months ago. I’m completely ready to get back to being by myself all day. I’m much more productive when I don’t have all the office distractions/drama to interrupt me. When I can finish a project while also doing laundry, it’s been a good day.
I can totally relate to that. I work from home myself, and my lack of discipline really shows how little discipline I had in the first place. Sometimes I miss the guarantee of getting paid, the coworkers the human interaction. I’m so lonely. . . so so lonely.
However, I love being able to have Entourage on in the background while I work. I love working for myself, I prefer the pant-less work environment to the panted one.
It’s funny, people always have a job they hate, or maybe the hate comes with any kind of job, i’d love to work from home and have that freedom you hate so much.
I’d kill for a job of any kind right now. Work from home, work from an office. Any income right now would be better than what I have now! :/
Ditto
ah nothing is ever good as it seems and we always want what we don’t have
About to start working from home too… hilarious. Nice job.
Haha,that’s pretty funny. I work from home to(as of now)and let me tell you,I have tried everything I can think of to jazz it up-I wear quirky costumes(the other day I decided to blog in a show girl inspired outfit out of random)&eat strange combinations of food to keep myself awake(I had a garlic toast and Nutella sandwich today-not as disgusting as you might think). So,from a fellow writer,let me just say that I feel your pain. Although I must admit,I enjoy being able to wear sparkly heels and boas to work as often as I want!
Humor&Hounds,
Lily Hex
lol… this is so funny and true. we work from home and there are many days I spend more time rewarding myself with great food than actually doing work. Freedom… who needs it!? =)
Just recently started working from home…and I’m going to stick to the getting dressed and getting to the “office” (aka spare bedroom) by 8:50 am every morning. I try to stay far far away from the refrigerator as well…as it calls my name. I can definitely relate to checking facebook way too many times in one day! Good luck! hm…I could go for some salsa…
i love this
writing
No…no…yes, I too work from home. It’s great fun. I get to do all the extra run-arounds because I’m home doing nothing anyway. And I wear all the hats in my business and I look really good in hats, especially with big brims, like a Stetson. People are free to call whenever they want and chat away because I’m not doing anything anyway. Friday rolls around and I find I’ve put in all of 3.5 hours in income-producing activity…and my chatty friends get mad because I can’t afford a movie this week. Well, I am exaggerating…a bit. Hey, why don’t you make some sketches for my website that’s not up yet, I mean, you’re not doing anything anyway, right.
With you on the salsa vibe, but I do prefer to work with something on that consists of more than just underwear
I can’t help but wonder if you would really feel the same way about working back in an office, after being there for a few months, once the novelty wore off
I know I’d be going stir-crazy to get back outta there!!
agree… how to handle it?
i know how it feels!
I get to telecommute some days, which is great for gas, but there are other days I prefer to work in the office. It’s much more fun to eat straight out of the salsa jar (also great for gas) when I’m there. But I’m not sure it’s as fun to whoever it is that keeps their salsa in the community fridge.
If you work at home you won’t need your car to commute. If you can sell it you might have enough money to take the first six months off. You can use that time to maybe find a better paying job with more hoilday time. With a better paying job you can afford a better home to work from. Can’t lose. Good post
I work from home too…I find that my work schedule is conducive to napping, massive consumptions of chips and salsa (I am so with you there) and an ass shaped like the chair. Every now and then, I squeeze some work in!
Glad to know I’m not the only one!! I find it so challenging some days to feel productive…and because I work from home, sprinkled with travel throughout the week, trying to get in any sort of rhythm is IM-POSS-IBLE. I like the flexibility (I watch “A Baby Story” while eating lunch) but having no human interaction and my time being my own means I feed my own guilty conscience a lot of the time.
I’ve always thought that I wouldn’t want to work at home because I enjoy the social stimulation of an office. However, in a period of 10 months, our small-to-begin-with regional office has downsized from about 18 people to 7. Some days I may speak only 10 words to another human…May as well be at home hopping up from my desk now and again to put a load of washing on…
It seems as if one always wants what they don’t have. I would love to work from home…. until I actually did. Then I’d probably long for the office setting once more.
Wait, no I wouldn’t.
I know how you feel! Only I have a small team I oversee everyday of my life! 5 (children aka minions!) I don’t know what I would do if I had ‘freedom’ love it for a day then hate it forever! Great post! Loved it
Got any home-based hobbies? lol
I guess it depends on how disciplined you are but then again external motivators do count. Working at home with no immediate supervisors or office mates to impress may have its down sides. As long as you love your job it would not really be a problem. http://reinehere.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/loving-your-job/
I put the salsa jar back in the fridge five minutes ago, wondering whether that counted as lunch or dinner. Working at home rocks!
this can’t be all that bad, i would love to do work at home, assuming its something I enjoy. I suppose that makes all the difference
Agreed! If it was something that I enjoyed doing then to heck with the rest of the rat race.
My deepest condolences. I used to work from home, and as soon as I was able to escape I fled!
I feel for your pain .So do a million responses to your post make you feel any more connected? And go get some pants on. Hoped my response helped.
You escaped? How
????
“The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.” – Alexis de Tocqueville
Where can I sign up? If I could get paid to blog I would be in perpetual heaven. Just say’in!
I enjoyed your post! I also work from home, although this home-work takes me traveling as well. But, yes, although it has its perks, sometimes, the only friend I got is my computer and people like you who write blog posts…:).
All true, all true. Been working from a home office for more than 2 years and sometimes I wonder if I’m even connected to the “real” world. But therein lies the secret — you have to stay connected to the real world. And I don’t mean connected on-line (though this, too, is essential). I mean personally, face2face, bad breath, bad hair and all. Business is still about relationships, and nothing can replace the warmth and promise of a smile and a handshake. Sometimes, I make myself drive to the post office, bank and dry cleaners even if I have no real reason to do so. It’s good to make public appearances and go through the motions. Keep moving. Stay connected and stay in motion. Otherwise, stagnation will set in. Unless you’re in the pool-cleaning business, algae ain’t good.
Salsa rocks.
Wearing no pants does too.
That other stuff about you longing for tyranny; I don’t know what you’re talking about.