Freelance Friday: How To Work From Home Without Going Insane

Reblogged from lenachen

1. Don’t actually work at home (at least not all the time).

This especially applies if you 1) live in a small apartment, 2) lack exposure to direct sunlight, or 3) don’t have an office … or uh, furniture, in my case. It took me a while to learn that a living room of pillows does not add up to a desk, but the same goes for those who are chilling out with laptops on their kitchen counters. If your live-work space is more of a live/work space, then balance out your time at home with some time at Starbucks, the Apple Store work stations, or even the public library. I may specialize in the “edgy” field of social media by day, but preparing my dinner by night while five feet away from the spot my ass occupied for the last five hours does not feel cutting edge in the least. Changing your location, even just a couple times a week, will keep you from getting claustrophobic and hating your apartment. (Plus, the taxpayer-subsidized reading chair I can’t afford to own does wonders for your posture.)

This entire piece is terrific, but this is the one that is hard for people to understand. I’m often asked if I “stay at home” with the baby. Well, yes… and no. It’s almost impossible for me to get any work done now that Patrick is in that highly mobile crawling/cruising stage of life. I have a sitter that comes to the house 3 days a week (actually 4 days, but Friday nights are designated “date nights) so I can work. On those days, I pack up my laptop and head to the Starbucks 4 miles away where I cram as much writing and editing into 5 hours as I possibly can before I pack up and head back home.

I know that’s not technically “staying at home” to most people. No, I’m not with my child 24/7 (I did that for the first two months of his life while my husband was deployed and nearly lost my mind), but I feel like it’s vastly different from the person who has to get up at 6 AM Monday through Friday to commute to a job 20 miles away for 8-10 hours a day. My schedule is flexible (as is my sitter’s) and dictated by my home life and my deadlines. There’s no way I’m getting all my work done in the 15 or so hours I have a sitter each week, so I squeeze in time after the baby has gone to sleep or on the weekends when my husband can take baby duty. It’s not ideal, mostly because I would really like to work more (yes!!) without sacrificing baby time, but it mostly works for me.

I still don’t have a satisfactory answer for those people who ask if I “stay at home,” though.

Kristina Wright

Notes