Cornered Office
with Mir Kamin
I'm a freelance writer and mother of two working from home, which theoretically means I can set my own schedule so as to best accommodate my family. In reality, "flexible hours" often equals "working too much." Yes, I'm my own boss; no, that doesn't mean life is easy. It's hard to leave the office when you live there. But I love what I do and feel very lucky. And not just because I get paid to work in my pajamas.
To learn more about Mir, check out her profile on Work It, Mom! or visit her blog at http://www.wouldashoulda.com/
I’ll take “Why I don’t travel more often” for $200, Alex
Categories: Head hitting brick wall, Now I'm free(lancing)
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Well, I’ve been home for over a week and everything is back to normal.
Haaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaaaa! I crack myself up.
Here’s the thing: No matter how much I prepare for a trip, no matter how much work I do when I’m away, no matter how diligently I work to catch up once I’m home again, no matter what I do to try to make re-entry as painless as possible, I am a creature of routine. Having that routine disrupted can take me a while to recover. And I know it’s stupid, and I know I should be more flexible or organized or something, but at one week back I still feel like I’ve barely returned.
I have a million excuses, of course. (I’m tiiiiiired; my husband was also away, right after I got back; it was a particularly rough week; Mercury is in retrograde!) [Disclaimer: I have no idea if Mercury is in retrograde, or if I should care even if it is.] And true to my usual form, I’m still attending to my work, but my failure to take care of other things is driving me crazy.
To wit: My suitcase is still on the floor of my bedroom. Why? I have no idea. (Sing it with me: “L-A-Z-Y, I ain’t got no alibi! I’m lazy, yeah yeah, I’m LAZY!”) It took me several days to even get to it to pull out the laundry (”Ewwwww,” my husband added, ever-helpful), and since then it has languished there wondering when I will retrieve the extra (clean) clothes I packed and then put it back in the attic where it belongs. I’ve tripped on it at least twice, and yet I haven’t put it away. (”L-A-Z-Y….”)
My desk is once again a mass of disarray. This is a standard cycle, you understand, where I clean it up and marvel at how lovely it is to have an uncluttered workspace, and then it gradually fills up again, lather, rinse, and repeat. But it’s particularly problematic this week because I’ve already misplaced several receipts from my trip (doh!) and discovered at least one form that was due more or less immediately that I’d forgotten about.
After half a week of eating out, I wanted nothing more than to come home to some Real Food, but of course I never managed to get to the grocery store last week (because we were so busy and I was so behind on everything else). This one, at least, I can (finally) claim victory over: I grocery shopped and then over the weekend we cooked up a storm. We have fresh bread, homemade soup, and everything we need to make meals for the week. Phew!
I find I’m still exhausted and having trouble getting back into my groove. People who travel all the time amaze me; I always feel like I need a vacation to recover from my trip. (And yes, I feel that way even when my vacation is an actual vacation, so as you might imagine, I’m a real pleasure as a travel partner.) It’s not that I regret going or that I’d rather stay home all the time, it’s just that I’m having trouble transitioning, I think.
Someone please tell me this sounds familiar. Otherwise, I may have to go sit in the corner and chant “15 minutes to Judge Wapner,” for a while….
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Oh my, yes, this is all too familiar. I’ve been home from my vacation (an actual one, with no work) for over 2 weeks and I’m still not caught up.
Tell me it gets better, right? Soon-ish maybe?
T | April 15th, 2008 at 9:59 am
This sounds sooooo familiar. Especially the suitcase part. One time, it sat there so long that when the next trip came around, nearly a month later, I barely had to do more packing because it was still mostly packed.
It may have been lazy. Or maybe I was just being uber-efficient. Yeah! Efficient!
Lylah | April 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am
Fresh bread and homemade soup — works for me. That’s what I make for comfort food, too! Crockpot and bread machine, they’re my friends.
Daisy | April 15th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Oh, it sounds familiar. Sometimes I spend half a vacation fretting about how to get everything done when I get back, and I don’t even have a paying job to worry about!
Brigitte | April 16th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Well it’s good to see that I’m not alone when it comes to leaving a suitcase staring at me from below…. We have so many details that need to be done on a daily basis, it’s really hard to catch up!
blapherMJ | April 17th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I literally had a suitcase sit for 6 months before I finally finished unpacking it and put it away. I understand that taking a long time to recover. Especially when, as a mom, we are responsible not just for the details of our lives, but of the details of our children’s and husband’s lives.
Lucinda | April 18th, 2008 at 3:21 pm