Working from home is a new phenomenon for a lot of people.

As a writer, I’ve always worked from home.

Many people have this romantic notion of getting up, walking down to their immaculate home office. You sit down and get to work and in a few hours you’ve hit your quota for the day or finished the project you’re working on.

You close the computer and take the rest of the day off.

At least that’s how I thought it would work when I decided I’d become a writer. Every day would be another torrent of creative energy and I’d work uninterrupted and the time would just fly by.

And.

I.

Was,

So.

Very.

Wrong.

If you’ve just started working from home or are about to let me give you a glimpse to what it starts to look like.

Oh sure, you have all the best intentions.

You think it will just like the office but now you can just do everything in your home. No more Barb from accounting asking you annoying questions. No more Craig telling you about his fantasy football team.

It will be sweet lonely bliss.

At first.

But it won’t take long before that daily schedule starts to look a little strange. And all that time alone starts to do things to you.

So, let’s look at a more typical day of working from home.

First, Things First

You wake up at ten o’clock in the morning.

I can already hear you now. What? That’s great. I’d love to get up at ten.

But you see, you’re waking up at ten because you were up to five finishing a freelance assignment that you waited till the last minute to do.

So you wake up at ten, but burning the candles at both ends lately has started to catch up with you so you fall back asleep till noon.

Getting To Work

Ahhhh, you’re thinking now that I’ve rested up I can finally get to work.

So you just slide over to your compute (I mean you can’t beat the commute right?)

Your fingers hit the keys.

This is it.

The words are about to come and then it’s off to the races. That novel will just come flying out and then you’ll never have to worry about people telling you to get a real job ever again.

And…

And…

Boy this desk is a little messy. I should probably clean it off.

Okay, now back to work.

Oh wait, now the dogs need to be let out.

Okay.

Back to work.

And now the dogs are barking at something.

Okay. Now back to work.

Just as you’re about to hit the keys you look out the window.

Boy, that grass is starting to get long. Better take care of that now.

Next thing you know two hours have flown by. Your lawn looks amazing, but then it dawns on you that you have yet to write a word today and the deadline is coming up fast.

It’s serious now.

You need to get to work.

But, are those last night’s dishes in the sink?

Well, can’t have that. You need to have a clean space to work in you tell yourself.

By the time you’re done with that. It’s actually dinner time.

It’s time to enjoy one of the perks of working from home. You can cook for yourself and eat when you want since you aren’t tied to an office.

Of course you could just do something simple, but that would be a waste of this freedom. So three course labor intensive meal it is.

And well, you can’t eat while you work.

I mean you can but it’s no fun.

So now it’s time to check Netflix.

Bingo, season 3 of Ozark.

And that’s when it happens.

You had it all figured out. It was so simple. All you had to do was sit down and write. But the time starts to slip away. 4, 5, 6 hours go by.

By the time you’re done binge-watching, it’s midnight and you have written a word and that deadline is staring you in the face.

You had all the time in the world, and now you’re going to have to pull an all nighter in order to get the assignment in on time.

You sit there frantically typing away wondering where all the time went.

And tomorrow the vicious circle repeats itself.

That’s the truth about working at home.