View From the Bushes

I have several page-a-day calendars. I find that they help a great deal in distinguishing one day of utter monotony from the next. One of my calendars is a Dilbert one, the cartoon for today was about working from home. In case the link doesn't work, basically it has Dilbert working at home and telling Ratbert and Dogbert to not disturb him unless the house is on fire, what they hear instead is: "I am your servant; my specialty is killing spiders." It made me laugh. See, I have always had this dream of being able to work from home. Which is one of the reasons I started DireKobold, though so far all that I have accomplished is making myself work away from home to a much greater age as I replenish my retirement fund, but I digress.

Working at home, as anyone who's tried it can tell you, is exactly like the Dilbert cartoon, because it is impossible (without building a separate structure for your office, which a lot of people I know have done) to separate yourself from the activities of the rest of the house. This statement should not be construed as an indictment of my own wife. Given that we have four kids, my wife is a giant in the field of leaving me alone while I work at home and should probably give lectures on the subject, but no matter how hard people try, inevitably you're going to get interrupted. Now this doesn't mean that you still can't be as, if not more, productive at home, because as is often pointed out to me, you get interrupted at work a lot too.

Suddenly during my rambling discourse I've undercut my own point. Nothing is more tragic than losing an argument you're having with yourself. For some reason I'm reminded of the Coffee Talk sketches that Mike Myers used to do on SNL. Working at home is neither work nor homey. Discuss amongst yourselves, Or as Voltaire would would say the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman nor an Empire. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross