I have been working without a job for the last 14 years. I answer all queries regarding my ‘working status’ in the negative. I am my own employer and employee and can fire and re-hire myself at will. Conventionally speaking, I am ‘unemployed’ but the numerous advantages I have over the ‘employed’ could very much induce the latter to consider moving over to my side. These clues add up to spell my condition- I work from home. As an author and freelance journalist I may be jobless, but not profession-less, and certainly not workless.
Picture this.
Its 8.30 in the morning and I’m alone at home. The two daughters are grudgingly attending the morning assembly at school and the husband is battling traffic tantrums along with fellow office-goers. I too need to get ready for work but there’s no hurry. I have time for a cuppa on the terrace, where I prepare my daily work schedule. No deadlines to be met, no obligations to be fulfilled, I work either on the basis of preference or priority, as the mood may be. For instance I may take up an unfinished article, which I might have given up weeks ago for no apparent reason, develop raw but promising ideas, send off finished features to any magazines that are likely to accept them or perhaps immerse myself in the second chapter of my fourth book. And when preference scores over priority, I can be found simply lolling on the couch, stretched over the window seat or curled in bed on a cold day, with book/books and tea/coffee.
Work schedule chalked out, I begin by checking emails if any. There was a news item on email hazards in the newspaper some days back, “Emails are causing unprecedented levels of stress among office goers as they struggle to cope with an unending tide of in coming messages. Pressure to check and respond quickly to emails makes some employees check their email inboxes up to 40 times an hour! A team of researchers has found that one in three office workers, who use computers regularly, suffer from email stress…” Some work places have introduced short yogic or meditative spells, to ease strenuous office curriculums- a handiwork of either over-worked or then simply considerate bosses. My yoga routine is slipshod, another victim of the mood; anyway, my work mode is almost stress-less due to its inherent simplicity.
I remember my own mother’s almost hysterical mornings and evenings. She worked as a teacher all throughout my unmarried life and every single working day the pandemonium at home resulted due to two opposing demands on her womanhood- that of a diligent home-maker and an efficient employee. The breach however remained un-bridgeable till she retired. Until her working days lasted, her hysteria was sparked off by a million small ‘disasters’ , as she liked to call them- unmade beds, chaotic laundry, messed up kitchen, pending plumbing, overdue bills etc, etc, at home, and chalking out curriculums, correcting papers, preparing progress reports and tackling troublemakers at school. She was forever in want of time and sanity.
My time and sanity suffer no such onslaught. I begin my day as home-maker by a systematic un-cluttering of domestic waste, followed by ‘me-time’, which offers a caffeine treat, extra lingering seconds in the shower and a breakfast of choice. This puts me into work mode. My work place is usually a large walnut desk, which my fancy has dragged across many corners and sides of the home and is embellished with an assortment of attractive stationary and a laptop. But being another mood dependency, the place of work is a variable. I usually try to plunge into two hours of uninterrupted work for a steady output, and then allow myself a stretch, a yawn and a snack. Between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon I have five working hours interspersed with at least three stretch- yawn-snack breaks. From nine to twelve in the night, I manage to squeeze out another three hours from the day, for working. This is of course a typically disciplined day. This can be un- answerably abandoned for various reasons like, un-avoidable domestic or social callings, low inspirational levels and sometimes even for a baseless whim.
Now picture the underbelly.
Being mine own employer, employee and manager I am the proverbial ‘Jack of all’. As employer I fail to enforce discipline and as employee I’m over-prone to procrastinate, so evidently in the face of these two, the manager in me has to get his word in edgewise. It takes very little for Satan to tempt me- a movie, a shopping escapade, a book, a futile telephone conversation, are some of his common snares. And contrarily it takes a lot in me to prevail over such lollipops.
Who better, to contrast my working mode with than my own mother again. The stress chart of her week days had only an upward incline. On the other hand, all days of my week can be all-working or all-procrastinating, depending on mood patterns. My levels of stress due to absence of time restraints are undoubtedly nil but I have my monsters too. Stress is replaced by despondency for me. If working outside the home, under demanding bosses and among freaky colleagues is stress inducing due to tight work schedules, then working from home under un-restrictiveness of time, boss or colleague can induce despondency due to undisciplined work patterns and hence erratic output. Everything in my mother’s home was in order- wardrobes, furniture, utensils, meal times, bed times, etc- routine ruled the roost and kept us all organized. I carry the weight of an unorganized routine; there is always something that needs to be completed.
The complete picture.
Working from home certainly scores over working away from home in terms of unrestrained freedom of time, work modes and work places and hence absence of work related stresses. But the former loses hands down from the latter in terms of a disciplined and organized life. If one causes stress the other despondency. This however is an unbiased assessment. Personal preference is the final decider and for me, I wouldn’t barter the luxuriousness of working from home with the restrictiveness of working away from home.
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—About our writer:
Anita says, "I'm a post graduate in Eng. Lit and have studied Creative writing and freelance journalism. I have authored a collection of poems and a biography of the renowned social activist Baba Amte. Just completed a book on the religious and historical and background of Tibet. I freelance as well. I'm wife to an army man and mother to two beautiful teenage daughters".
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