Day 225 (Tuesday, 9/7): Working from Home

After dropping LB off at Pam's on Tuesday, I grabbed my cup of morning joe from Coffee Roasters and headed home. On Tuesdays, I usually like to work at CR for a couple of hours before heading home around lunchtime, but on this Tuesday I decided to go home, since I wanted to spread out all my various piles of grading. Essays. Grammar exercises. Assignments out of the textbook. Quizzes.

I am fortunate to have a job where I can do a large portion of it at home, i.e., the lesson planning, the grading, the email checking, and of course, the ever-present dissertation writing. Of course one of the dangers of working from home is that there is always work at home to distract me from my job, i.e., doing the dishes.

If I am working at home and there are dirty dishes in the sink, they will gnaw at me until I finally do them. Why does my brain do this to me? Why can't I work on my dissertation and just let the dishes sit in the sink? The dishes can of course be substituted for any household chore that needs to be done. Obviously, such distractions is why I usually like to work at the library or the coffee shop.

And even though I work from home (or from the coffee shop) a lot, I still have a co-worker, my dear friend Sheila, who lives in Northern California. A few months ago, I was reading some articles online, looking for some tips for working from home, and one of the tips I came across was to find a co-worker for yourself, someone whom you could call and with whom you could "work." Basically, at a designated time, say 9 AM on a Tuesday, I will call Sheila and tell her my work plan for the next couple of hours--usually finish a lecture, grade some essays, write. And Sheila will tell me her plan--finish up some reading, take some notes, write (whatever she is doing usually sounds more interesting than what I am doing). Then we will both work on our tasks for the designated time, sometimes for a couple of hours or perhaps for the day. At the end of the designated time, Sheila will usually call me back and we'll summarize how our work went: "Poorly, I couldn't focus. I had to go do the dishes." or "Great! I wrote two pages! Everything is coming together!" or "Slowly, but surely. Just gotta keep chippin' away."

Having my co-worker Sheila is good for several reasons. Not only is Sheila brilliant and fabulous, but I think it is also good to have someone to tell my plan for the day to and to be responsible to (I'm telling Sheila I'm going to do this, so I'm going to do it). And because the nature of our work can be so lonely (studying, writing, and researching doesn't necessarily require a lot of interaction with others), it's good to have someone with whom I can share the small triumphs of the workday or with whom I can commiserate. Someone who also understands all the motivations, inspirations, and miserable moments of working toward the doctorate.