The company I work for has chosen to radically minimize expenses, and I have been given the chance to completely close my brick-and-mortar office and work from home full-time. This means that all my interactions between myself and colleagues, customers, vendors, contractors, takes place in my home studio/office/den/multipurpose room, over Skype or webcam.
On the upside there will be no more smoke signals - I have a no-burn ordinance in my neighborhood.
I already had an office at home, and it was a busy one. I take care of the home business, the charities I work for, the occasional voice-over work all from the comfort of the techno-cocoon the family calls 'the back office'. I even 'worked from home' a couple days a week in there as well.
While many would welcome such a work arrangement, I find it most unnerving. Besides having my professional hub of activity for the past decade shut down and stuffed into boxes in my garage, my 'home' i.e. 'back' office is very crowded now, surrounded on ALL sides by computer monitors of various sizes, where only 2 sides were covered before. It is also very hard to separate 'home' life from 'work' life, since they happen in the same space. Not to mention the dog barking at a cat outside while I'm in a teleconference spanning 3 continents. Lacks professionalism somehow.
Nonetheless, here I am, at work, yet on my blog, in sleep pants and a T-shirt, posting away as my son, now 10, stirs and wakes up in his room across the hall on his first official day of summer vacation. He's still at an age where he wants to spend time with me, but old enough to understand when dad is busy and needs to be left alone. For that I am blessed, to be able to spend the summer with him in this way really is a gift disguised as cost containment.
Now if the freakin' dog just had a clue, I could deal with it.
