Spring is reaching out toward summer – in just a few short weeks the days will begin to grow shorter again. I’ve been remiss about posting here and am not sure exactly why. Several reasons, I guess.
Work has been busy since I returned from my trip to CT. My before and after work hours seem full of tasks – with Ella, around the house, our “garden”, mowing, mowing and mowing again our little patch of lawn. Perhaps our non-motorized push motor doesn’t cut as short as tonier devices, requiring more frequent cutting. David bought an electric weed whacker thingy, first time I’d ever used one. We needed it because our push mower doesn’t cut down the dandelions or any other stiff stuff that sticks up above the general grassy congregation. David finished his updated kayak – it’s beautiful and it floats (I was never worried, but he said he had doubts – just insecurities, I think). Last weekend we went to a lake in Camden and had a lovely paddle. And of course I still get up between 5:00 and 6:00 and walk Ella a mile or a mile and a half every morning, and half or more of that distance in the middle of the day. And just about always, make Maine's 9:00 p.m. "midnight" my bedtime. So the days are full.
What I’m thinking about right now is what a change it has been for me to work from home rather than go into an office. Although I’ve occasionally worked from home in the past, both in my current and in former jobs, this is the first time I've done so full-time (with the exception of occasional short visits to the CT office). The thing that surprised me first about this change was how much more productive it makes my time. There are almost no distractions (okay, occasionally Ella barks at the Federal Express man; she has finally gotten to know the mail carrier). No one stops by to chat. I don’t run into people in the hall when I go downstairs to get a cup of coffee. The flip side, obviously, is a certain isolation. But, frankly, I’m not that much more isolated than I was sitting in a 6 x 6 foot cubicle all day.
I have been fortunate enough to work full time (meaning most of the time significantly more than 40 hours a week) since I was in college (as I worked full time during college). I have never been out of work for more than a few weeks – even with my pregnancies, even with surgeries and chemotherapy and radiation treatments for cancer. All of those days, all of those years, I have gotten up in the morning, dressed "for work," commuted to an office, sat in a chair in an actual "office" or more of the time, a tiny cubicle, and worked. Many people I worked with in Connecticut would get up in the middle of the day and go to the gym to work out, or go outside and take a walk, or just go out to lunch. I generally didn’t do any of those things, except a rare lunch with a friend or much rarer walk with a friend. Day after day, year after year, I spent 40, 50, 60 hours a week in an office environment.
I find that it is wonderful to be in my own home instead. We were able to take the smallest “bedroom” and dedicate it to being my “office” and the only thing I use it for is for work. So it “feels” like the office, but … BUT … it is located in my own home. It is wonderful to go downstairs for a cup of coffee, get it, open the back door, and step out into the sunshine on our little “deck.” There’s a lawn chair there. Occasionally I sit in the sun for 5 minutes, watching birds come and go from 2 feeders hanging off of the garage. It is wonderful to take a 10-15 minute break in the afternoon and walk Ella through my own neighborhood, see and greet folks I’m beginning to get to know, and watch the seasons changing the neighborhood’s lawns. It is wonderful to sit down at our own dining room table to eat my grilled cheese sandwich for lunch, read for 15 minutes, and then step outside and take another 10 minutes to water our little raised bed where we planted carrot seeds, cucumber, pepper and tomato seedlings and flowers.
I feel like I’ve been set free from a cage in which I have led a restricted existence for decades. I don’t know if I’m expressing myself clearly. This isn’t about having a job. This feeling isn’t about working; it’s about where I do my work. It isn’t working that now seems to have caged me in, but being in an “office” hour after hour, day after day, year after year, decade after decade.
Perhaps the experience of working from home is particularly meaningful to me because it is happening at just the same time that I have a first home of my own (at least since 1976), rather than living in a rented apartment. Likely this is a significant part of this feeling. But whatever the basis for it doesn’t matter, the result is that I like getting up every morning knowing that the work day awaits me just steps away, in my own lovely green work space. A couple of pictures (these were taken right after we set up my “office” and it definitely looks more lived and worked in now than then, especially with photos of my gorgeous grandsons now hanging on the wall behind my computer where I see them all day long):
In a week I am off for a few days to Atlanta to visit both of my children, my grandsons and my brother. I cannot say I look forward to the trip itself, driving 80 miles to the Portland airport at the start and end of the trip, and then dealing with flying. But at least the flights are non-stop, at least Atlanta will be somewhat past the height of my allergy hell and not quite at the apex of summer humidity – and my lovely little grandsons are worth all of it.
Meanwhile, pot luck dinner at a local rabbi’s house last evening where a visiting Israeli guest spoke movingly about what life is like for regular Isarelis today, the fears and hopes of life. This afternoon or tomorrow, perhaps, kayaking after David gets off of work. This time in the ocean.
And so, hoping for fair winds, smooth seas and peace, peace, far and near.
