She Works Hard for the Money

There are things I love about working from home. I love being able to focus solely on the tast at hand, rather than listening to chatty coworkers or whinging passers-by. I love that I can wear the same pair of pants two days in a row without fear of someone noticing. I love the food. The coffee. The laundry on the lunch hour. I love that I have the world’s shortest commute – one that literally involves rolling out of bed and into the home office next door.

Out of bed and into the office. A startling omission there, perhaps, is the bathroom. This is what I do not love about working from home: Yes, it’s true. I don’t shower anymore. I am honest and truly treading on the world’s most unhygienic person with the world’s shortest commute. You lose your sense of self, in a way. It becomes startlingly easy to get up, make coffee, watch a little Today show, and jump right into the office. And before you know it, it’s 2 p.m. and you are sitting there, braless, in a pair of cotton pajamas that you realize haven’t left the confines of your body for three days.

I left the house tonight for the first time in three days, to pick up yet another tool for my hermitty aspirations, an all-in-one scanner/printer/fax/copier. With this machine and the Interweb, I never have to leave again.

I’m scaring myself. You know that scene in Singles when Campbell Scott attacks Bridget Fonda because he hasn’t seen a human in weeks? That’s me.

And it’s all coming to an end soon. Talked to work today, and they have decided, as they promised, but never followed through on, to keep my contract limited through the end of the year, rather than indefinitely. Like an abused wife, I was angry, upset and FLAT-OUT PISSED when I heard this. As if I need this aggravation and torture, yet for some reason, I felt so…REJECTED.

But, um, HELLO. I moved. I moved away from my job that I hated, didn’t want to keep it up, and I was lucky enough to be offered a contract to work while I found a job. Except that I thought, for some stupid reason, that I’d be keeping it indefinitely, and that *I* would be the one to tell them where to stick it.

Riiiight. Dude, I hated it. The perpetual feeling of failure. Working for people with the most asinine expectations of entitlement. Working three jobs and 15 hour days just to keep people from screaming at me. Just Thursday night, I had to rush home from dinner with my husband to do something for that job. And we discussed quitting. I moved down here for a better lifestyle, and three times in as many weeks, I’ve had to cancel a personal event, or work late at night. It’s so funny, but as I think about it, I don’t think I ever would have left them until I had a kid. It never made me happy, but I’ve always been a sick glutton for punishment.

I feel like a kid on a bike right now, careening down the street with ribbons screaming from my handlebars. Stage three: Elation. Stage one was shock, two was fury, and three is ELATION. I am moving on! MOVING ON! I will have time to write. Time to relax. Time to find something local that I actually like.

It’s weird. There is this nagging thing in the back of my mind that says, “You’ve failed! If you were perfect, they wouldn’t let you go even if you moved to Timbuktu.”

Which is, of course, a lie. But I still feel rejected. And angry. And elated. All at once. And in a weird way, I’m totally getting what I wished for.

9 comments September 15th, 2005