Work from Home: An Anniversary

In honor of Halloween (the absolute best day of the year to work from home) and it being roughly the 7th anniversary of my working this way I’d like to present a few snippets of the last seven years of my work-from-where-I-wish life:

• Being involved at my kid’s school so much that when we are out kids randomly wave to me while I stare blankly back at them.
• Getting to see the train go by (which only happens during the day).
• The lack of sunshine this time of year not really affecting me.
• Getting to eat lunch with my wife x100 more than the average husband.
• Being snowed in for 10 days during a very bad snow/ice storm, and having work continue without fail
• Setting up a stationary bike in my office and training for a 150 mile bike ride without it affecting the family schedule at all.
• Working from a coffee shop near my house so often that my kids thought that I worked there as a barista and asked why I didn’t know how to make the drinks.
• Working from a Dunkin Donuts, and eating many donuts.
• Working from a Sweet Tomatoes, and not eating any salad.
• Muting a conference call because I was standing on a railroad track in a quiet place, when suddenly a train came by
• Working from my hometown, at the dining room table that I ate on as a child
• Working at night on Friday and Saturday nights while watching Jason Statham movies on a second monitor without any sound
• Listening in on a training webinar while holding / changing / rocking / talking-to / enjoying a 3-month newborn.
• Conducting a phone interview from the hallway outside the Neonatal intensive care unit of Atlanta Medical Center
• Not meeting any new people in my field in meatspace for an entire year before realizing I need to attend more conferences and industry events. And also develop a personality, etc.
• Realizing through a few small talk sessions that the parents of the other kids where my twins go to preschool think I’m serially unemployed.
• Wearing shorts 90% of my life.
• Gaining 10 lbs, and then not losing it, and then gaining 30 more lbs.
• Riding my bike up Kennesaw Mountain, which is closed to bikes on Fridays and the weekend, at least 25 times over multiple long lunch breaks.
• Going for walks. So many walks. Pretty much 0 runs, but many walks. Learning things on the walks like where the geese land during migration every year, and the best place to see deer (behind the bowling alley, at dusk).
• Working from a coworking place, only to have it shut down, and then another only to have it shut down. Driving an hour to work from another coworking spot which I loved.
• Working from a restaurant for five hours and only ordering breadsticks, and not being able to remember the restaurant.
• Learning that most places use their phone number as the wifi password.
• Working four hours in the morning, then four hours after the sun went down, and having every afternoon off for a few months before I almost dropped dead from exhaustion.
• Working from a sandwich shop a mile from my house and literally being their first customer ever (and later, one of their last)
• Moving from working quietly and without human interaction at my local coffee shop to now seeing people I know there every time I go.
• Converting a room into a nice office with standing desk, sitting desk, and then invisible desk.
• Turning that room into a play room and using the top of a bookshelf in the corner of our bedroom as an office
• Writing some code to show my daughter what I do and to help her with her math homework.
• Signing for many UPS packages, monitoring many cable installers, plumbers, and Jehovah Witnesses.