The Office

My office these days is mostly on the floor of my daughter's room. As I work, I'm surrounded by so much brightly colored plastic and cloth, that you'd think I was either working in the playpen at McDonald's or in the large intestine of the boss's Gloworm. My office chair isn't an Aeron. It's either my grandfather's old rocking chair, or a couple of pillows on the guest bed. While neither offer the "distinctive looks and pioneering ergonomics" these chairs claim, I suspect that they do beat it in "adapting naturally and adjusting precisely to fit people of all sizes and postures doing all kinds of activities, all day long". Do they have a comforting creak when you rock the boss to sleep? Can you slump down and sleep in them when you're tired? Nah.

I sit in the rocking chair with my laptop and phone most of the time, or sit just outside her door at a desk when the boss is in her jumper. Actually, moshing is a better description of what she does in that thing. While I work, I watch her crawl back and forth across the floor, warning her away from the electrical cords and fending off her hands as she grabs at my laptop screen and tries to correct my coding errors or proofread my work.

The majority of my work takes place while she's sleeping. During nap time, I sit totally still at my desk outside her room and work as quickly as possible . . . most of the time. Some days, like today, I find that even though there is plenty of work to do, I am unable to do much beyond surf the internet and read up on some of the topics I am interested in online. Soon enough, a call from behind the closed door indicates that my exile is over, and I scoop my daughter up and go back to work in my office, while she ping-pongs around the room.

When I started working from home, the idea of a home office was one of luxury - a room where everything was organized, full of computers and papers, that I could escape to and work undisturbed. That dream didn't last long. The offices featured in IKEA are illusions. The closest I come to that is a desk at the top of the stairs on our second-floor landing, which has equal parts work stuff and baby stuff spread out all around it, and is so full of papers that the desk top is invisible under a sliding pile of papers. It is also the temporary home to a bunch of computer parts, manuals and CDs while I try to breathe life into my computer after a crashed hard drive and failed RAID setup.

From time-to-time I move my office around. This can usually can be done in one trip. The small human gets one arm, my cell phone, along with a pen, gets stuffed in a pocket, and my laptop is carried in the other arm, with the power supply balanced on top. Using this arrangement, I can leave the upstairs landing and work in other exotic locations, like the kitchen table or the floor in the family room.

I have a couple of friends who think being able to work from home and owning your own business means you have truly arrived. They think I have it all. I can set my own hours, dress however I want to, and I don't have to commute. Yeah, right. My hours are now whatever it takes to make the customers happy, some days I don't get a shower, and others I am clawing at the walls for an excuse to get out. I have to clean up or live with my own messes, there's no IT support, and I don't have people around to bounce ideas off of - just the echo of my own thoughts. And the belly laughs, yowls, and chuckles of my little girl as she zooms past to climb up on another piece of furniture.

It is true that there are some perks to working at home. The flexible schedule means that my little boss can call me in for meetings whenever she wishes, or we can go do lunch together if we choose. I can take advantage of the office rec center, which is open around the clock (ride my bike on a trainer in the laundry room), see what's been left out in the snack room, or adjust the vents so that the draft in my office isn't blowing down my neck. I can also meet with other business associates for lunch - the boss likes lunch with Mommy, or take the company car out for some errands. My favorite perk is being "out of the office". Since I am almost never away, this usually means either that I have something slimy smeared up to my elbows, or that someone is taking a nap. What and who, I'll leave to your imagination.

Well, it's getting late, and I'm the only one still at work, so I think I'll close things down and lock up for tonight.