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Hello, I’m Jane and I work from home.
Sometimes I sit in bed with a cup of coffee and work. Sometimes I wear pyjamas for the whole day and I work. Sometimes I sit in a comfy chair, wrapped in a blanket and work. Sometimes I go to a nice cafe, enjoy their free WiFi and work. Sometimes when the sun shines I sit in the garden and work. Quite a lot of the time you’ll find me at 3 or 4 in the morning still working.
I’ve left the rat race. The scramble to find somewhere to sit on public transport; the open plan offices from hell and the requirement to wear proper, clean clothes on a daily basis. Those days are thankfully behind me.
Working from home is brilliant, but it’s not the skive people seem to think it is. People think I spend the day lolling about watching daytime TV. Honestly it’s never on unless there is some seriously significant breaking news I need to be aware of. People think I do very little, but my to-do list is probably longer than most 9-5 peeps.
The trade-off for working in bed, or wearing pjs or drinking nice coffee in a nice cafe is that I have to work ruddy hard. I start work when the boys leave at around 8am and its fairly non-stop from there. The great thing is no two days are the same for me, there are different things to see and do on every day of the week. I meet some great people and sometimes I get to collaborate with them on exceptionally exciting things.
Most days I do have appointments, meetings and events to go to. But factoring in searching for work, researching jobs, doing work, invoicing for work, admin, attending meetings and events, my days can be horribly long. I get very little family time, I often work well into the early hours, as I type this I’m nearing my 20th consecutive hour of work, I hardly sleep, my mind is constantly on the job. Even when we’re enjoying full on family time I’m always thinking can I blog about this, should I blog about this?
I earn very little, a pittance really. Would I swap it for a stuffy suit, a grotty open plan office and a game of sardines on the bus? Not on your nelly! I love my new found self-employed status, despite the long hours I don’t regret it for a single second.