Those of you who work at home will sympathize with my dilema. Working at home with no family can be a very lonely and isolated venture.
I’m a divorced father living alone in a 2 bedroom apartment. My lovely daughters stay with me every other weekend and I very much look forward to their arrival. We play games, share stories, watch movies and even go out for meals and bookstore shopping. I look forward to these times I get to share with my girls.
But when I’m alone I get to work. I must motivate myself to wake up each morning at a decent hour in order to make some coffee, eat a little breaky, check email, then get to writing. It’s not always easy.
I’ve always been a procrastinator. In high school and college I wrote term papers and final dissertations usually the day or night before they were due. Not a good practice in the professional writing world. Each writing project I acquire gets assigned a due date on my calendar so I know what must be done by what day.
The problem with that system is that if I have a day or two between project due dates I get complacent and believe it is a day off where I can watch a DVD or read a book. Why? Because typing all day all by myself is boring. Sure, I love the research I do for writing projects. But staying home while all my friends are at their day jobs puts me in a place where I must entertain myself. And frankly, I can be a pretty boring person.
So freelance writing isn’t all fun and games. It requires a heap of self motivation and the ability to keep oneself solitarily occupied. I’m still learning. I’ve worked in a business office for over 13 years so the last six months at home have been an interesting challenge. But is it worth it to be home sometimes 24 hours a day? You bet! I wouldn’t change a thing. It can only get better with experience.
