The Challenge of Working From the Home Office

A number of years ago I decided that it would be nice to have a job in which I was able to work out of a home office. I won’t bore you with the list of reasons why it interested me other than who doesn’t like the idea of working in a t-shirt and a pair of shorts.

Eventually I was able to make the dream come true and I found myself making my way from the bedroom, to the bathroom and then to my office. It has its perks. I don’t find myself screaming at the guy shaving in his car or the woman applying eye liner in her minivan as often. There are times when it is among my greatest pleasures and moments when it is…not.

I have often written about how my children are my greatest joy. I derive such pleasure from them. They are nothing but a blessing and they add far more to my life than I can ever express. However, they haven’t realized that when I am at the desk I am surrounded by the Cone of Silence. Unfortunately it works about as well in real life as it did on television.

So as I sit at the ‘puter taking care of business I am besieged by laughter, crying, screaming, beach balls, power rangers, Dora The Explorer, Legos, Lincoln Logs, dolls, The Justice League, Diego, books and a thousand requests such as”Open this dad,” “Abba! Look at me now!” “I can do this,” etc.

As you can imagine it makes it challenging to get things done. I once finished negotiating terms for a contract while enjoying a tea party and fending off Lex Luthor and The Joker. As a matter of fact I think that my clients would want to pay extra for a man who can multi task as well as I can.

Fortunately for my sanity and everyone else I don’t always work out of the house and the kids go to school. So there are large blocks of time in which we are not in each others hair. I try hard to do most of my work when the children are not around. It is not really fair to them to say that even though they see me I am not available to spend time with them.

And I’d be lying if I said that sometimes that they distract me even when they aren’t trying to. Sometimes when I am wrestling with something particularly onerous it is easy to look their direction and think about switching places. As a matter of fact they often ask if they can come to work and do what I do.

This morning I was positively giddy thinking about how much fun it would be to watch my daughter handle one of my challenging assignments. She’d put her hands on her hips and start barking orders at them. It wouldn’t matter what they said because at a few weeks short of three she is still the queen of the world. The Tyrant Tike doesn’t brook any backtalk.

I have no doubt that in about fifteen minutes the other side would collapse and agree to her terms. If you’ll excuse me I am going to go prep her for this. I think that maybe it is time to bring in the big guns.

• Saved: Random Thoughts