Working From Home

When you have a job, working from home isn't unheard-of.  In that situation, there seemed to be two different modes of working from home:

1. Appreciating the lack of distraction and focusing to get work done
2. Not really wanting to come into the office and getting the minimal amount done to qualify as "looking busy"

Everyone's done both, we're human.  From colleagues who don't want to be in the office themselves, the sour grapes perspective easily turns to imagining that the person at home is watching movies and having a grand old time.  We all want those breaks.

I now felt that I was perceived as sitting home, watching movies and having a grand old time.  What made me feel guilty was that it was true.  My days now started at 7am and lasted until 1am in which I was accomplishing everything I wanted to, but it was by own design and schedule.  If I devoted my afternoon to creative pursuits, watching Heroes as background was completely reasonable.  If I wanted to meet a friend for lunch while running errands, I was in no hurry.  Doing this felt positively decadent. 

Having no colleagues in my day-to-day, sharing my exact exeriences and frustrations, I needed to create my own comfort zone.  Chris Hammersley told me early on that there is a sense of isolation that needs addressing and man, was he right. 

Still working out my actual business, completing some travel plans before getting into an uninterrupted business phase, I felt inadequate to my working friends.  A negative "well, you're home all day anyway"  rang in my own eaes. Justifying in my head that I was constantly making progress still showed no appreciable return.   

So I started talking to people.  Simple as it sounds, I started reaching out for feedback, experience, anecdotes from other people who had started their own businesses. My new colleagues became friends, particularly friends with this common bond.  My new support network were people I could meet for lunch (previously hard to negotiate around meetings and work demands).  I could bounce ideas off friends, they shared their experiences.  This new piece was genuinely exciting.