October 13, 2009

Basement Life

Wow, a whole month since our last post. In the last 7 years, I think we’ve only gone that long between posts one other time. I don’t think you’re that concerned about why. Sure we’ve been busy lately, but who hasn’t right? Even the picture of the day has become the picture of the week. Yeesh.

In July, I began working from home, and I wanted to share about how the working from home is going so far. When I took the position at LifeChurch.tv, Tiffany and I had some reservations about me working from home. But…so far so good.

The boys seem to understand, and they are respecting the boundaries between my work time and home time. It helps that my office is in the basement. The kids don’t walk by my door frequently. Except for the occasional temper-tantrum (from Andrew not Tiffany), most of what goes on upstairs never bothers me.

Instead of them being tempted to come downstairs, more often than not, I’m tempted to wander upstairs to see what I’m missing out on and smell whatever Tiffany has in the oven. Once I had to go upstairs to arbitrate a game of Battleship between Tiffany and Caleb. Also, there are the occasional emergency diaper changes and spiders in the house, you know, things that only a man can handle.

As I began contemplating working from home, I wondered if I would be able to enjoy working without the day-to-day, face-to-face interaction with co-workers. This hasn’t bothered me that much. In this situation, it helps when you lean more toward being an introvert. The digerati team stays in close contact throughout the day using the remote employee must-haves like IM, Skype video chats, and we’re recently experimenting with Google Wave. My productivity has actually increased by not having the distractions of chit-chat conversations, and a productive day goes a long way toward having a good day.

I do miss coffee breaks with co-workers, but the trade-off is getting to have more moments in the day with family. And you can’t beat that!

Now, if we can figure out a way to make my corner office in basement a little less…well…ugly. That’s okay though. I’ll take ugly over moldy any day of the week.