Working from Home
It's Friday morning, and I'm working from home. I thought about getting my hair cut this morning, but had a telephone conference mid-morning. Of course that got cancelled, so I'm now free to work on whatever I want – I can't really continue with anything, so it looks like a day of house-keeping – running backups, looking at training materials, that kind of thing.
When I work from home I find it very hard to switch off in the same way you might while wandering off to make a coffee in the office. After packing the younger children off to school this morning, I found myself with half an hour to spare – so ran off and tidied their rooms up ahead of a planned sleep-over for their friends tonight. Ten minutes ago I wandered off to make a coffee, and ended up loading the washing machine and dryer while waiting for the water to boil. Oh, and took out the recycling too. There's always something to do.
I'm not sure I would be very good at working from home all the time – not because of getting distracted – more the opposite. A couple of days ago at work I forgot to buy any lunch from the sandwich van, probably because I was consumed in whatever I was doing when it arrived. Two of the girls in the office arrived at my desk with their “emergency supplies” – a tin of soup, a packet of porridge oats, a chocolate bar, and a packet of cheese biscuits. They then told me off an hour later (mid afternoon) because I had still not touched any of it. I “just needed to get this working”...
I think I finally ate the porridge at about 4pm.
I'm terrible for forgetting to eat. Back in the days before children I would often work on open-source web development projects, and after coding throughout the weekend, would wonder why I felt so weak. And then I would remember missing breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
(half an hour passes while I reply to a work email, and a package is delivered to the front door)
The Chromebook just arrived. I just unpacked it and switched it on. It seems to work (unsurprisingly). It's getting it's first drink of electricity while I type this. I will admit to being a bit crafty, and clearing my browsing history and all extensions from Google Chrome before logging into it – I've seen that go pear shaped before. Everything seemed to work like clockwork. My golly it's fast compared to the old Chromebook (which our eldest daughter inherited this morning – perhaps this means she finally retires the 2008 Macbook which has been on it's last legs for years).
Anyway. I feel a coffee coming on...