Exiting The Salt Mines- thoughts on working at home

The home office means something different when it’s actually IN your house. I’ve had years of on again, off again experience with this and I think I finally have a feel for it. Here is some unsolicited advice:

Take weekends off. Or take a weekend mid-week. But don’t work ten hours a day, seven days a week, all month every month. Your work and your all-important quality of life will suffer. 9-6 is my gig, with a leisurely lunch in there somewhere. And I sometimes feel like this is too much. That’s a guilty feeling, too. The alternative, however, is terrible. If you scratch away when you feel like it, with no real lasting discipline, you let down everyone around you, you let yourself down, you develop patterns associated with guilt sloth, many people start lying when it gets bad and then all is lost. Everyone around you knows when this happens and it isn’t possible to trust someone again after they went down that dead end road. It’s back to the mop bucket. A little too much work is better than too little. Find the right mix. If that mix feels clean and wholesome, you’re right on target.

Don’t drink, dummy. That beer you had with lunch will turn into whiskey in your morning coffee in less than six months. And weed? Harmless weed? Marijuana has crippled everyone I know who smoked it daily after 30. All of them, without exception. If you’re 31, grow up or report to your mop bucket in the real world. The home office is not for you. If you’re baked all day, here is the difference between your fate and mine- all of it, the whole game, goes to me and my clearheaded pals. You can always be the foggy guy or gal who can dream big dreams while you round up the coffee order. I take mine black. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad weed and booze are legal, but all this crazy shit has to have rules, and the best rule of them all for the self-starter who has to self-start five days a week?? Sundays only, and never before 7:00. Live by it. Show some willpower. It’s the same willpower you need for everything else the home office entails. Believe me when I tell you that if I can do it, so can you. My father was a drunk and my mother was a junky. I come from lowdown Missouri addict stock, so I should be drunk off my ass and sniffing glue in a trailer somewhere, maybe working as a meth cook assistant or a junk picker. But here I am. There have been times in my gloriously checkered past when I smoked way too much weed or drank too much whiskey, and those were not my best times, mind-wise. The same is true for everyone. Understanding this is a positive thing! Tomorrow is a brand new day.

Exercise a little. You don’t need to go crazy with it. A couple miles, pushups until you don’t feel like doing them, maybe some pullups. Ya gotta get moving. If you don’t, dudes, your dick will weaken, chicks, your butt will get big. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I think you already knew.

Wear clothes. Clean ones. Dress like you’re going to work because you are. But wear cool clothes, because style is important to the mind. You PJs will poison your essence if exposed to too much daylight, just like your workday sweatpants getup.

See people in real life, not just zoom life. So important. Some creatives and home operators go into a weird inner head space and become shy and reclusive. This happened to everyone during covid. Get out there a couple times a week at the very least and mix it up. People are good for the most part! If you stick close to home and just read the news (heaven forbid) as your main conduit to humanity, you will eventually become a heavily armed hermit.

TWO PHONES. A second phone cost a whopping ten bucks a month. I have Cricket. One phone is for biz and I answer it Monday-Saturday from 9-6 because I’m serious about my work. I value people’s time, their voice, their input, their cooperation. I am a real, actual business conducting real, actual business. It isn’t a hobby. The people calling me are the same. I’m also serious about life, dinner, reading time, leisure, water coloring, my chick, so I don’t answer the biz phone after 6:01. It has voicemail. My primary cell, maybe 30 to 40 people have that number, some of them business associates, and I change that number (for ten bucks) every six months or so when I move from one period into the next. I’m about to do it next week. Sometimes I just flip the phones and switch the purpose of the numbers. It takes all of five minutes to text out a new number to my pals and the few business associates who may need to reach me after hours.

Keep your house clean, as in Japanese hotel clean. We have all kinds of antiques and it can be a huge pain in the ass, but this place is spotless. Why? Disorder is the enemy when working at home.

Last, and this is super important- joy. You worked hard as a fucker to get where you are, am I right? Out of the rat race. Free and clear. Maybe you write or do art of some kind, maybe you started a business, but there you are. A human with no physical commute. Listen to some music. Drink the good coffee. Wear the suit, you clever badass, but maybe not the shoes.

Groove on over to http://www.greatpinkskeleton.com for more inspiring mind junk.