Beta Mum's Blog Beta Mum on 13 Jul 2007 12:46 pm
Upstairs upstairs
Mother at Large has passed me an award, for which I thank her profusely.
Her post today has also got me thinking about the perils of working from home, stashed away at the top of the house, out of reach of the shaky central heating system.
External deadlines suddenly disappear, and fantasy ones just don’t cut the mustard.
Telling yourself things like,
If I get this project done by Friday I’ll take the afternoon off…
will merely succeed in getting it planned by Thursday, after which you will take the whole of Friday off because…
I worked so hard to get this far, and really all I need to do now is to write the damn thing. How hard can that be? I deserve a day off and the deadline’s only been set by me anyway, I can always hand it in on Monday.
Tuesday would actually be better because the editor has meetings all day Monday and she’ll be busy catching up on her e-mails on Tuesday.
Yeah, Friday off is nothing more than I deserve after four days’ hard work, well, three and a half days really, as I had to go to the supermarket on Monday morning. Well, someone had to or the cat’d still be eating leftover turkey, which must be off by now.
Better go downstairs and chuck it out actually, I can finish off the plan on Monday and still have it written up by Tuesday.
Thank God I don’t have all those meetings to contend with now I work from home. I save so much time I can pop out pretty much whenever I need to. Better nip into town this afternoon, we’re running low on coffee again.
Never mind, at least not being at the office means I save all that commuting time - half an hour each way, five days a week, that means I can stop work now and not start again until, well, Wednesday probably, and I’ll still get it done sooner than if I’d been at work.
Right, better be off.
What you need is self discipline, but not such a debilitating fear of bankruptcy that you go to the opposite extreme, saving just a few hours to call your own on a Sunday afternoon.
What you need is Tony’s Middle Way, but by the look of him after three terms in office he didn’t ever manage to find it himself.
He did work from home though.
And now to pass on the compliment -
I hereby send the Rockin Blogger award to Not Wrong, just different - a glimpse into the life of a Brit trying to cope in the American midwest; and to Mutterings and Meanderings, a fellow Bowie fan who keeps me in touch with rural life, while I stare out of my window at houses, trains and dog poo.
Keep on blogging.
on 13 Jul 2007 at 7:44 pm 1.Mutterings & Meanderings said …
Oh thank you! That’s lovely.
You don’t know how much I envy you, working from home. Shall we swap for a couple of weeks?
on 13 Jul 2007 at 10:05 pm 2.Alasdair said …
Hi Beta Mum,
I’ve just been browsing and I’ve got to say that the award is well deserved … nice one.
on 13 Jul 2007 at 11:44 pm 3.lady macleod said …
Congratulations! Well done. Interesting “rule book” for work…
on 14 Jul 2007 at 1:30 am 4.Iota said …
THANK YOU!! This is so exciting. And I can’t think of anyone I’d be prouder to receive it from.
Do I just copy it and pass it on? Are there any rules?
Thanks again. And by the way, “trying to cope” just about says it all…
on 14 Jul 2007 at 11:12 am 5.Beta Mum said …
M&M - I bet you wouldn’t envy my bank statements though!
Alasdair - thank you, and welcome. I loved Man About the House. I wanted to leave home and share a flat with Richard O’ Sullivan instead of living with my boring family.
Lady - thanks. A rule book it ain’t!
Iota - Very sweet of you. You need to pass it on to two people, they just copy the logo into theri site. I think it’s for women, but I’m not sure. I’ve seen the same logo with “girl” in it but the “girl” bit seems to have disappeared.
Anyone else know about that?
on 14 Jul 2007 at 1:32 pm 6.Omega Mummy said …
Congrats, fellow rocker.
on 14 Jul 2007 at 10:05 pm 7.Mother at Large said …
This is just hilarious - but I’m cringing too, because it’s so painfully like my ‘working’ life. Except I’m less honest with myself than you are about all the procrastination that goes on.
My worst fault is doing the research for a story, then stalling for days before writing it up, because I’m lazy. By the time I get round to it, it’s harder to write, since the material’s not as fresh in my mind. Cue yet more prevarication…
Thanks for the links, by the way.
on 15 Jul 2007 at 5:39 am 8.DJ said …
I really do feel a ‘teensy’ bit jealous of Mums who WFH but this post showed me a side I hadn’t considered. Still jealous though… Grass being greener and all that….