Chaos and the Home Office

One of the best things about working in an office is that when your personal life seems chaotic you can escape to work, and when work is chaotic you can escape to home. Unfortunately, when you work from home there is no escape.  Cue the scary, horror movie music.

One of my better plans when I started working from home was to try and keep things separate.  I keep everything work related on my work computer and everything home/personal on my home computer.  Heck, I even have two separate desks.  Unfortunately, since my office space is limited the desks sit next to each other.  Today is one of those overwhelming days where both desks are stacked high with stuff that needs doing.  I’m trying to focus on work, but out of the corner of my eye I see the stack of bills that need paying. If I take a break to work on home stuff, I can’t help but see the emails rolling in on the work computer.  Now, I know that conventional wisdom would say to turn off the email notification, but since I support a crucial software system I have to at least scan emails when they come in.

Not me. Not my desk. But a very good representation of what it feels like.

When I started working from home I naively thought there would be few distractions.  Boy, was I wrong!  The distractions are different from what you get in an office, but they are still there. My older dog thinks it is her sworn duty to bark at everything that passes by her window. My younger dog doesn’t understand why I won’t take her for walks whenever she wants, so she gets whiny.    Telemarketers call all day long, but I at least got smart and turned off the ringer on the home phone.  We live near a busy road, so there are traffic noises and sirens all day long.  I feel like that old commercial, “Calgon, take me away”!

So, there is my confession. Working from home is not all sunshine and roses. It can be filled with distractions and on a bad day there is no escape from chaos.  Oh well, time to stop distracting myself with the blog and dive back in!