I’m now wrapping my second week of full-time (un)employment at Pegasus News. My state of mind can best be summed up in this little ditty from my personal poet laureate, Todd Snider:
Now the nights are long
The driving’s tough
Hotels stink, and the pay sucks
But I can’t dig what I do enough, so it never gets be down
My great lesson of the first fortnight is that I’m not cut out for working from home. Why, you ask?
- When I’m home during the day, dogs don’t understand that it’s not the weekend, which in our house means play, play, play.
- Having the person you married — on purpose, because you wanted to be around her — in the "office" all day is not conducive to work. Even if she’s minding her own business.
- "Attractive nuisance" is not often taken as a compliment, even when it is intended as such. (It’s all in the intonation. Emphasis on the first word.)
- When one is working on a complex spreadsheet, the goings-on out on the street become absolutely fascinating, validating one’s belief that neighborhood news is the plastics of the aughties.
That’s not to say that there aren’t upsides — the dress code is pretty slack and I’ve lost five pounds simply due to the proximity of the pool and the lack of proximity of fast food and office noshing. (I seem to have temporarily thwarted Jeff Sinelli’s plot to kill me with his delicious crack-laden potato chips.)
However, it’s time to go gently back into that real world of officedom. And thanks to the good graces and generous negotiating of my true pal and once and future landlord Manny Ybarra, we take possession of our office space today.
Now, if we only had furniture to put in said office, that would be something.
