How to Work at Home

I have worked from home for ten years. People say, "Oh, real tough. Pajamas all day." Working from home has serious dangers: burnout, weight gain, backache, poor overall health, depression. I share here advice I learned the hard way:

• Allow yourself time off each day.
• Eat three good meals a day. Not all at once.
• Draw strict boundaries between work time and time off. Do not be always available.
• For best results, start the day with work. Also known as "start strong."
• Keep two-column to-do list with "must do today" on one side, and "universe, you take care of it" on the other.
• Don't keep sweets around, including dry cookie mix, because you will pick all the chocolate chips out of the dry cookie mix and then eat by the spoonful what's left.
• The only snacks in the house should be terribly fibrous items such as raw carrots or Triscuits. 
• Drink water.
• Social media and surfing will exhaust you via cumulative decision fatigue, and social media as a business strategy does not work.
• Exercise or do physical labor or your body will rapidly age and your mood deteriorate: no joke.
• Demons hate fresh air.
• Those working at computers need real office chairs that fit them and maintain good posture.
• That little skin tag is not cancer.
• Specs wearers, have an optometrist make you "computer glasses" with single-vision lenses that show clearly only that which is 18 to 23 inches from your face. "Computer glasses" reduce squinting and neck craning, and are cheap.
• Shower in full and dress in fresh clothing twice a week, such as on Wednesday and Sunday.
• Limit pasta to one day per week. Something to look forward to.
• Never try to trim your own hair.
• Doing the impossible trains your employer to expect you to do more impossible assignments.
• One day per week is laundry day. Do not do laundry on any other than the designated day, unless you have kids.
• Do have three working computers in the dwelling, especially if one of them has Windows 10.
• Back up your work, and your clients', into the cloud or onto a thumb drive.
• Pull the plug from the TV and do not use it except to play exercise DVDs.
• Sleeplessness, a very much changed appetite, or feeling sickened when you approach your work station, are signs of burnout. Stress is about to ruin your health. Recovery might take months. Reduce your efforts at once.
• When you find yourself reviewing the same thing over and over, or reading and not comprehending, quit for the day.
• If your ears are ringing, quit for the day and go to bed as soon as is feasible.
• Do what you promised your boss or client you would do, and offer no more than that unless you are offered more money.
• Withhold information about your personal life. Bosses, clients, and students are not co-workers or friends. Avoid volunteering unnecessary information, such as describing how hard you worked on a project or that your son is graduating next week.

Best of luck.

It's A Beautiful Day

Yesterday: Head spinning, so near exhaustion I dread writing an email, I decide I cannot work this week and tell the boss I'm taking the week off.
Today: Greet HVAC repair guy who arrives at the door two hours early and fixes the issue in 20 minutes.
Dress and equip for mushroom hunt; after fruitless hunting, shower and dress.
Drive townward for a car emissions test.
While waiting, walk a block and get a hamburger. Using their WiFi, I find two pleasing work-related emails and send an email requesting a check, and am assured that it is being sent today.
Buy vivid green blocks of rodent poison, the large bag of them, not the small.
It's May 15, the frost-free day for Zone 6, so I select three baby plants, two basil, one rosemary, and tell them, "You are so lucky. You will be loved."
Buy new windshield wipers, amazed to hear that nowadays they are sold singly, the drivers' side wiper longer and costlier than the passenger side.
Return DVDs Steve Jobs, Fahrenheit 451, and Dallas Buyers Club to the library, four weeks late because it took me that long to watch them all.
Buy a jar of Noxzema and two bags of ground coffee.
Pharmacy pickup.
Drop recyclables into a UPS box.
Obtain cash at ATM.
Pick up dry-cleaned winter coat, costing most of the cash.
Get a drive-through car wash.
Buy a dozen lovely brown fresh local eggs at the feed store where I have been served by the same guy for 20 years.
Buy fruit and vegetables at House Springs. Golden Delicious are the best apples. I did not believe that when I first heard it, because Red Delicious are so cloying. A beautiful drive on a day all wildly blue and green.
At home, inspect the bluebird box in the meadow. All of the chickadees have fledged. Removed their nest and cleaned the box for the next occupants.
Process newly bought fruit and vegetables for the fridge and freezer.
Dinner: Cream of asparagus soup, slice of black-olive bread, fresh corn on the cob.
Assemble all required papers and finish online the two-year car license registration, ordering the special "Don't Tread on Me" snake design I have always liked.
Good Lord, it's 9 p.m.

What Time Is It?

Mom was in the bed she died in, in the living room because no other room had enough space for that rolling hospital cot. She'd been washed and shampooed by the CNA and my sister when she quietly breathed her last, while I was getting on the plane to Phoenix, and when I landed and switched on my mobile data saw my sister's text that the funeral-home people would hold off on taking Mom's body until I got there, if I hurried.

Mom and I had built a good adult relationship and I visited often in the past few years, knowing that parents don't last. In May she'd been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer that she was suffering from since March. I was glad she'd been released from it; and parents die because that's what parents do, sadly. I had no last-minute beggings and forgivings like so many people seem to have, at least in movies. Dad had passed suddenly and shockingly of a heart attack in 1982; now, that gave me what we call PTSD, then called being hysterical and messed up, and agoraphobia (the sidewalk bounced like a trampoline, it really did!) and feared mirrors and electricity and was terrified I'd never be sane again. I'm older now, and so was Mom. She was 82. Stepdad survives her; he's 98. This time he's the traumatized one, with good reason. "I never believe this gonna happen," he said, in his accent.

I'd planned a week's stay and it turned out perfectly aligned with Mom's death, funeral, and burial, and 118-degree days and 95-degree nights. I wrote the obituary because that's how I could serve, and gave the eulogy because the eldest child does, while my sister who is the executor did paperwork and phone calls and the other sister hosted and poured drinks for our many callers and guests. Besides going to the funeral home and picking out the casket, etc., I couldn't be of much service so I simply worked as I usually do, beset by deadlines, except retiring very late and rising very early and speaking some Serbian. Here, I'll teach you: "Bozhe, Bozhe, " literally, "O God, O God," and only older people say it because it connotes: "God, I've seen a lot of s--t in my time, but this takes the cake."

I asked my sisters what was Mom's biggest gift to them, and we all agreed it was her work ethic so that's what the eulogy was about. I didn't write it; I spoke. I get handed a lot of "Read the eulogy I wrote for my parent" and they are all the same. Mom didn't look like herself in her coffin simply because she was lying down and still. Only her hands, folded, looked like her. We all agreed that was not our mother.

So I came home to some kindly friends, thank God, and when I was alone realized that whenever under stress or really excited I'd called my mother to tell her about it. I actually turned to look around for the phone before realizing.

I Feel Like Working Again

I couldn't get out of bed and wasted hours on the Net, in bed or on the couch, and folded a magazine to a fine recipe for Peach-Pecan Upside-Down Cake, and bought the peaches, but they spoiled. And bought the pecans, but ate them because I didn't feel like cooking (call the doctor!) and actually bought frozen dinners, and after a while eating wasn't appealing either (call the coroner!). I re-acquired my fears of bread, fat, meats, calories, alcohol, and sugar, plus caffeine (I'd read up on metabolic syndrome), all of which I'd blithely consumed while vacationing in Portugal where people don't worry, and within a few days of returning re-acquired aches, pains, hypochondria, fear of crime, and blues entirely absent while I was there. Making phone calls was an ordeal, as was sitting or standing; I slacked. I did the minimum amount of work (which is still a lot; there's no second income here) and during the entire past month met up with only two friends. Couldn't write. Exhausted by the very idea of washing, styling, dressing, and making up. Thought I had no excuse. But I was burnt out after working 12 to 14 hours a day for months, so that merely approaching my workspace lashed me with a wave of nausea  and dread which I fought with a firehose of positive thinking--and secretly doing nothing for two or three days at a time, letting matters worsen and fester. And I took no pleasure in anything.

Just today--having separated from one of my jobs--I felt like working again. It took a month of near-idleness to restore me. Two months if you count the vacation. I just made soup and furthermore I ate some. Don't work 12 to 14 hours a day for six months, no matter how much you should, or even for good reasons. This experience taught me there are pressures and workloads I can't handle, or can't handle anymore.

Beautiful Days, Lonely Nights

The landlord's handyman came by and did three or four repairs, one of them climbing the wooden ladder I still have and cleaning the gutters, and upon returning to earth he said, "That roof really needs replacing."

Inwardly I jumped for joy, because I've known for a year that the roof is in terrible shape, but was waiting until the landlord noticed, because my complaints involving repairs or replacements don't go very far. In exchange for cheap rent I must accept a crumbling house, appallingly "roachier" and "mousier" than I've seen in 14 years living here. And--blasphemy-- I began to think for the first time of moving from my dream house. Of course the question becomes, where would I go?

Better not to think about it and to live in the moment and enjoy wonderful lengthy days of June, and the rain-washed greenery and wild roses and birds I love, and the propane I got very cheaply on May 30, when demand bottoms out; see what I've learned, living in the country? February through May I fell into bed at 2 a.m. exhausted but exhilarated by a bigger bank account, allowing wonderful travel plans -- I haven't traveled for fun for three years. And yet, and yet. . .I've reduced my life to nothing but work. I hardly cook and throw no parties. (When I was overworking I ate raw green lettuce and Spaghetti-Os out of cans.) No one comes by. I hunt mushrooms, photograph and ID them, and dry the specimens. I've been trying to make more connections: hiking and camping meetups, business and professional meetings, gallery hops Friday nights in town, calling friends, dating sites. But nothing comes of these. Something's deeply wrong and needs adjustment. It's probably not my beloved house.