Thoughts on Working from Home

Working from home. I've done it for six and a half years now, and I'm still flailing about when it comes to finding a rhythm. (But that's true across most areas of my life, not just the work-at-home part. It's my ongoing challenge.) As with most things, even the good ones, pitfalls appear in this freelancing lifestyle. It's not all bon-bons and pajamas, you know. Still, I'm not complaining, because it sure beats packing a lunch and putting on pantyhose every day. Hell, I don't even have to wear pants if I don't want to. (Though, as you'll see in a bit, I usually do.)

As I search for the rhythms, rituals, and systems that allow my creativity, sanity, and productivity to flourish, I've been thinking about the things no one ever told me before I embarked on the solopreneur path.

1. Stock up on toilet paper. You will go through a LOT more of it when you're home all day long. This is especially true if you're a woman. First of all, our bladders are smaller than men's, so we make more trips to the loo. Second of all, we can't just shake and go, if you know what I mean. (Note to self: Research whether toilet paper is a deductible business expense.)

2. Stock up on coffee, tea, or whatever is your cup of -- well, you get it. If you used to get your caffeine fix from the office stash, you'll now need to buy more of your favorite beverages for your home use. (Obviously, this point leads right back to point #1 above.) You may not necessarily drink more coffee than you were drinking before, but you might have to start buying more if it yourself.

2a. Other things you will use more of: utilities (water, electricity, gas) and dish soap (for all of the extra dishes you'll dirty by eating more meals at home). On the flip side, your transportation costs will probably go down.

3. Leave your house! It's totally possible to not go anywhere for days on end (especially if you don't have kids -- or much of a local social life) and thus turn a little wiley-eyed and crazy. Your husband may one day suggest (only half-jokingly) that you get a paper route just so you are forced to leave the house once per day. I say, skip the paper route and do one of these instead: Go for a walk; the fresh air will help you to think. Take yourself out to lunch every once in awhile, or meet-up with someone for a meal. Run errands on sunny days so you can get some Vitamin D. (This one applies to those of us in grey climates.) I even saw some people on Facebook discussing the idea of picking other people's kids up from school to force themselves to leave the house. That's more than I want to commit to, but it's definitely an option.

4. Consider an alternate workspace. Combine points one through three above into a trifecta: Leave the house, have someone else make your coffee, and save a day's worth of toilet paper! Scope out a coffee shop or café to work in on the days when you need a change of pace. Or try a local library (though you may have to leave the coffee at home. I've been yelled at for having a hot beverage in the library -- while standing at the front desk. I think the librarian would have blown a fuse if I'd tried to sit down at a table with my to-go cup.)

5. There are no vending machines in your bedroom. And unless you live in a hip urban condo building, there is no grocery store, restaurant, or café on the first floor of your dwelling. If you live in rural-suburbia, as I do, there may be no food purchase option within walking distance. (Unless you want to walk the two miles to the gas station convenience store.) This means you need to keep healthy, tasty, and easy food on hand for snacks and lunches. And for dinners, too, because working from home means you can easily look up at the clock and discover that it's after 7:00pm and all you have in the kitchen is a sink full of dirty dishes.

[I first detailed the three levels of eating options over here. Code Green: Schedule time into your day to cook something and take a break to do it. Level two, or Code Yellow: Have food in the house that's ready to eat, such as fruit, leftovers, sandwich fixin's, or a frozen meal option. (I like those by Amy's Kitchen and Kashi.) Code Red: Have cash on hand to order an emergency pizza or sushi for delivery. (Or consider leaving the house to pick up some food somewhere. Remember: Leaving your house is a good thing!)]

6. Take a shower. Get dressed. Feel pretty. These three are supremely important steps if they're what it takes to make you feel good and happy during the day. Feeling good and happy is good for your work. Maybe you don't need to feel clean and cute every day. But if you do, know this about yourself and make it happen. I don't mean you have to dress up. I certainly don't mean you have to wear pantyhose. Just throw on whatever makes you feel good: a dress over your favorite jeans, wide-legged comfy pants with a soft tee-shirt, or yoga pants and a tank top. Just because you might not leave your house doesn't mean you have to feel like a fugly mess. On the other hand, if you like to rock out in your PJs and bed head, go for it. And if pants aren't your thing, skip 'em. This is all about what works for you. (I should note that I don't have wee ones at home with me. I realize this makes the whole showering and getting dressed thing much easier.)

7. Find your rhythm. I need to establish daily, weekly, and monthly rhythms so I know when it's time to work, when it's time to do laundry, and when it's time to relax. This is harder than it should be when working from home. Living and working in the same place is convenient and flexible, yes, but it's also confusing and boundary-blurring. When any time is a time to work, there's never a true time to relax. I suck at this one, but I'm trying to find what works for me.

8. Create a dedicated workspace, even if it's just a corner of the dining room table. Ideally, dedicate a room in your house to your work. This will help to ease the blurring of boundaries in #6. Make that space sacred and special, in whatever way works for you, which leads me to the next point.

9. Clean, organize, and beautify your workspace -- and consider this part of your job. Unless you have a housekeeper or a partner who does it for you, no one is coming by your office after hours to empty the trash, dust, vacuum, and tidy-up. The office manager isn't going to hang a new painting on the wall. Oh wait, you're the office manager, which is an extra duty, but it's also awesome because you get to customize your work space. What do you need? Bare, white walls? Lush artwork? Photos of places and people you love? Good lighting? Make it happen. It's important.

While you're at it, consider following these three steps (clean, organize, beautify) for your whole dang house. You're going to be spending a lot of time in your domicile, and the state of things there will seep into your work. If you're easily distracted by messiness, keep your studio and the rest of the house tidy.  (This is another reason that I like having a dedicated room for work. Even if the rest of the house is a seething, riotous mess, I can have at least one small space of calm for my work. I can clean the studio, shut the door, and worry about the rest of it later.) If you thrive in chaos, disregard this. (No sarcasm there, seriously.)

10. Move yo' body. When your commute is measured in feet instead of miles, there's no option of biking or walking to work. And there's not even any walking to and from your car. When my body is stiff, achy, and sluggish, so is my mind. I combat this by taking a walk, doing some yoga poses or stretches, or vigorously cleaning the bathroom. (I'm not kidding.) I've even been known to go to the gym. And these days, I'm known to put on roller skates and hit people.

(In fact, it's this last point that has me thinking about how I need to move even more throughout my day. Most of my roller derby practices are late in the evening, around 8:00 or 9:00. If I've spent all day sitting at home working, I'm extra slow and creaky when I get on my skates. The exercise is easier if I've forced myself to move and stretch more earlier in the day.)

11. Move your workspace. This is related to several points above, but it's different. In addition to creating a dedicated workspace in your house and occasionally going out to your alternate work place (café, library, etc.), I also recommend mixing it up by working somewhere else in your house besides your office or studio. For me, this is at the dining room table, on my living room couch, or in my guest room. I move around whenever I need a slight change of scenery or a shift in energy -- or when the studio itself needs another round of editing in 3-D.

12. Use the phone. Working at home can be isolating. You might feel like a hermit, which you may or may not like. In addition to remembering to leave the house from time to time, you might also want to use the telephone or Skype to talk to another real, live human being sometimes. If you have a few friends who also work from home, schedule a chat with them. Consider this your virtual meeting at the water cooler/passing in the hallway time.

** ** **

Right now, as I write this, I'm eating salt and vinegar potato chips and working at my dining room table because my studio is too messy to work in. I cleaned off this table by putting a pile of papers on the couch. I don't know if I have anything here to make for dinner, and it's already 8:00pm. I have a load of wet laundry sitting in the washing machine waiting for me to deal with it, but I keep putting that off to get a few more work things done. Earlier today I opened the last pack of toilet paper and also noticed that I'm almost out of coffee filters. I left my house long enough to walk across the street to the mailbox, but I didn't go any further than that on foot and I haven't driven anywhere either. I also haven't talked to anyone, unless you count Facebook and texting. On the plus side, I did shower today, I'm wearing clothes that make me happy, and I had yummy leftovers for lunch.

** ** **

p.s. My husband is on his way home from work with emergency sushi and Thai food. That gives me just enough time to switch over the laundry and think about washing the dishes in the sink.

Forgetting to Be Scared (Roller Derby Makes Me Brave #6)

me after my first public roller derby scrimmage as part of westmoreland roller derby's violet femmes home team

This is the sixth installment of "Roller Derby Makes Me Brave," an ongoing series in which I chronicle my journey into roller derby. (You can read the whole series or the individual posts.)

The Friday after Thanksgiving I felt more like the girl who sits on the couch in her pajamas and favorite soft-as-a-blanket cardigan, drinking tea and reading than I felt like the girl who shimmies into a pair of black tights, laces up her roller skates, and straps on a helmet to skate in an oval and knock down similarly dressed girls. But by late afternoon I had pulled my post-Thanksgiving ass off of the couch, showered, applied more eye makeup than I normally wear, hiked my tights up under a black miniskirt, and headed off to Westmoreland Roller Derby's Black Friday Bout.

This was my third public scrimmage, and I realized that I'm woefully behind in telling you about how we got to this point in the Roller Derby Makes Me Brave saga.

When last we left our derby heroine, Punchberry JAM, she had just attended her first practice in full gear. She was learning how to fall and how to get back up, literally and metaphorically.

That was last spring. I went to a few practices, and then to a few more, each time surprised with myself for sticking with this wild adventure.

Some time during the last six months I confided this truth to a non-derby friend:

"I haven't stopped being scared," I said. "I'm pretty much scared every time I stand up on skates."

"But you keep showing up," she said.

That's true. April turned to May turned to June, and I was still showing up -- and still skating on a terrible pair of Cobra skates. Their limitations were becoming obvious.

Now, let me be clear: Good skates don't exactly make the skater, but good skates do make skating easier. Wheeling around on a pair of toy skates with cheap plastic wheels and crap bearings while everyone else zooms past on bona fide speed skates can dishearten even the most determined derby girl. I couldn't do some of the most basic maneuvers, such as propelling myself forward with all eight wheels on the floor, not even when I moved my legs and hips as I was shown. I was skating twice as hard as anyone else and going half as fast. I hoped to the derby gods that these shortcomings were at least in part due to the shitty skates. But I worried: What if the real problem was me? The limitations of my body mingled with the limitations of my skates so that I had no idea which was which.

I needed new skates stat, but I dragged my feet on getting them. I was having trouble deciding on a pair, to put it mildly. Before derby I had no idea how many decisions one must make when buying roller skates.

What kinds of decisions? Read on if you care about that kind of thing, or skip the next paragraph if you don't.

Okay, so you wanna buy skates for roller derby. What kind of boot do you want? Leather or synthetic? What's the right size and style for short, wide feet with flat arches? Do you want nylon, aluminum, or titanium plates? What about the trucks? (Who knew there was something called a truck on a skate?) You could go with the standard 10-degree angle trucks or the swanky 45-degree angles. And what the hell is a "short forward mount," anyway? Then there are the wheels. Harder wheels go faster and are denoted by higher durometer numbers. (Go ahead, look up the word durometer. I don't think anyone but derby girls and plastic manufacturers use it.) Softer wheels have more grip and lower numbers. The bigger you are, the harder the wheel you can skate on, but if you're not very steady on your feet yet, don't go too hard or you'll slide around. And all of this depends on what kind of floor you'll be skating on. Concrete skates different than sport court skates different than wood. Okay, got your wheels picked out? Great. What about bearings for inside those wheels? Get at least ABEC-7, or go to Swiss bearings if you want really smooth rolling action. And you'll need some toe stops, of course. What about an extra set of laces? How about a toecap to protect the front of the boot from getting scuffed? Need any knee socks with your order? You got all that?

Yes, finally, I got all that. I tend to research things to death. I'm great at gathering and synthesizing information, but that process is also my Achilles' heel: I get trapped in analysis paralysis. For weeks I agonized over which skates to get. I wanted to make sure I bought the best possible ones for me. But something else was at play in my dilly-dallying: As long as I had crap skates, I could blame them for my crap skating. This was happening on a subconscious level, of course. (And as I've said, skates do not the skater make. I've seen derby girls skate like the wind in bad rental skates.)

old skates and new skates

I wore the hell out of those Cobra skates. I wore them until something came loose inside the wheels and I was afraid to skate on them anymore. This happened right before I finally ordered a new pair, which meant I sat out a few weeks of practice while I waited for my shiny new skates to arrive.

(In case you care about this kind of thing, I got Sure Grip Rebel leather boots, Avenger DA45 plates, QUBE Juice Abec 7 bearings, pink Fugitive wheels, Carerra stops, pink-and-black plaid laces, and pink toe covers, though I'm now skating on black Radar Flat Outrageous wheels with Swiss bearings and have switched to black laces and black toe covers. Next up on the never-ending gear list is a set of Gumdrop toe stops.)

At the same time that I was waiting for my new skates, I was also spending several hours a week in physical therapy for my knee, which had decided to go haywire with all of this newfangled movement and exercise. And then I went to the west coast for two weeks in July, missing more practices and the league's first public scrimmage.

By the time August rolled around, my knee was on the mend and I had new skates -- and I was still scared every time I stood up on them. I hadn't skated much for about a month, and it showed. I wasn't exactly starting over, but I was scrambling to catch up and keep up. The good news is that I could now propel myself with all eight wheels on the floor, and although I was still slower than most of the others, I was definitely skating faster. I finally felt like I had all of the external pieces in order. Now I had to bring myself up to speed.

And that's where I am now: still working to bring myself up to speed. I go to practice twice a week and try to skate at least one other day. I've played in three public home scrimmages plus one closed scrimmage with the Ohio Valley Roller Girls.

This journey has been an up-and-down kind of adventure so far. I suspect that's how it will always be. I've lost a few weeks of training here and there due to laziness or new injuries. I've had nights where I've sobbed most of the way home after practice because I'm so frustrated with myself. I've also left practices bursting with joy and a kind of exhilaration I've never known before.

james & me at my first boutI'm still nowhere near where I want to be as a roller derby girl, but I'm not where I started, either. After the Black Friday bout, I wasn't feeling the best about my performance. But then at the after-party, the bench manager asked me how my knee was doing after its latest rebellion, and I could honestly say that it's much stronger than it's been. "That's great," she said. "I'm glad you can keep skating. You've come so far." I don't know if she had any idea how much I needed to hear those words (though it wouldn't surprise me if she did).

I've been making note (sometimes in my head, sometimes in my journal) of these little "wins," no matter how small they might seem on the surface: when a teammate says "good job"; when I don't fall down after a bigger girl shoulder checks me; when I do fall but get up quickly; when I figure out a strategy and communicate it to my team; when I master -- or even attempt -- a new skating skill.

I'm keeping track of these moments because one by one, they're helping me to be a little more confident. I get off the couch. I pull on the tights. I lace up the skates. I slap on the helmet.

I had good practice the other week. I was having a blast out there on the track. I felt strong and capable. And that's when it hit me: I had finally forgotten to be scared.

{photo credits: photo of me by james simpson; roster photo and photo of james and me by d.j. coffman, a.k.a. the secretary of skate; skates photo by me}

Vote for Me (Punchberry Jam) & My Writing on Derby Life

I've been working on a new installment of "Roller Derby Makes Me Brave" and should have it up in the next few days. But today I'm asking for your help.

If you enjoy my writing, please vote for me in the DerbyLife.com writing contest. Voting ends Saturday (December 1).

I submitted one of my essays to their contest months ago, and voting finally opened earlier this month without me realizing it. So I have just one more day to get votes. Eek! The person with the most votes will receive a regular column on DerbyLife.com.

Voting is easy-peasy. (No registration required!)

1. Go to www.derbylife.com/2012/11/writing_contest_voting.
2. Click the circle button next to "Roller Derby Makes Me Brave: This New Way of Being" by Punchberry Jam. (That's me!)
3. Click "Submit" at the bottom of the page.

I'd love to share my writing with a new audience. Thank you for helping me to make that happen.

Downriver in the Writing Life

Over the weekend I read an essay on The Rumpus called "Not Writing Is Your Alligator." In it, writer Catherine Lacey responds to a letter from a young writer. The gist of her advice is that you should run from the state of "not writing" as you would from an alligator that was chasing you.

The thing that struck me, beyond how well-written and insightful the essay is, was this: I am not 19 years old anymore.

The young writer who wrote the letter to Lacey was a 19-year-old guy who was just beginning to navigate the waters of I'm-choosing-a-college-and-I-want-to-follow-my-passion-of-writing-while-my-family-wants-me-to-be-practical-and-I-know-I'll-have-to-make-money-somehow-but-how-will-I-do-that-without-killing-my-soul?. You know those waters, right? A lot of us have swum in that river.

In her response, Lacey mentions that she has about eight years on the guy, which would put her around 27.

The second thing that struck me while reading the essay: I am not 27 anymore.

And then the third thing that struck me hit me really hard, like a large book -- maybe an old-fashioned encyclopedia like the kind teenagers used to consult in the reference section of the library: I am closer to 39 than I am to 19 or even 29.

Well now. 

** ** **

At this thought the river current sped up. I felt like I had woke up on a raft waaay downriver from where I'd started out and realized several things at once:

1. I've been on this river a long time.
2. The last 18 years of this journey have flown by fast.
3. This section along the river looks nothing like the land I left at age 19.
4. At least I'm on raft and not still swimming.
5. How is it possible that I'm still on this river?!
6. On second thought, this section of the river looks a lot like it did when I was 19.
7. Am I lost?
8. What was my destination again, and how will I know when I've arrived?
9. I wonder who else has floated down this river. (Mark Twain comes to mind, but that's just because of the raft.)
10. Is that an alligator?!

** ** **

Four years ago this week I'd just returned from a writing retreat in New Jersey. I thought of that trip as I voted last Tuesday because I remember driving across Pennsylvania the day after the last election, desperately scanning the radio for a station carrying NPR. But there was no NPR to be had in the heartland of this very wide state, only the nasty Rush Limbaugh, sappy religious stations, and popular country music, none of which are to my taste. By the time I made it to the retreat house, a low pressure system had parked itself just off shore and gave us three straight days of total cloud cover, high surf, and a depressing drizzle  that occasionally flared up into real rain.

I didn't write anything during that retreat, but it turned out to be a pivotal moment in my writing life, as it's when I decided to look into MFA programs. Within four months I'd researched, applied to, and heard back from my top choices. That summer I attended my first on-campus residency. And now, blink!, I've had my degree for more than a year, there's been another presidential election, and I have a book that's still only about one-quarter of the way done.

** ** **

When I was 19, the prolific writing habit of my childhood and earlier teen years sputtered. It seemed to diminish in direct proportion to how much good literature I read. I avoided creative writing classes in college for as long as I could, terrified by the thought that I might discover that I suck at this thing I love. Even after enjoying and doing well in the few writing courses I finally took, I slunk back to my literature studies, and the bright idea of being a writer dimmed until I forgot to look for it as a beacon in the night.

** ** **

When I was in my mid-twenties I first heard of the "40 Under 40" awards presented by Pittsburgh Magazine to people under the age of 40 for doing great things in the city. And I thought: Forty? Really? That's not exactly young. What's so remarkable about someone under 40 doing something great? Maybe 25 under 25, or even 30 under 30, but gee whiz, 40? By the time you're approaching 40 you've had ample time to figure things out and get on with your greatness. I'd certainly hope you were doing something worthwhile by 40!

Well now.

** ** **

Everything changes.

** ** **

I'll be 40 in just three years. That's not much time to get on with my greatness. Panic could set in if I let it. Fight or flight.

** ** **

Four years later: I'm still trying to figure out how to write this book.

Eighteen years later: I'm still running from the same damn alligator, figuring out how to navigate this river.

** ** **

Nothing changes.

** ** **

For too many years I've allowed the fear of failing to gobble up the desire to write. I've been running from my writing because it's lodged in the belly of an alligator with bad breath.

I wish I'd had as much sense of urgency and direction at 19 as I do now when I'm one month away from 37. I wish I'd turned to look the primordial reptile in its slitted eyes and slayed that fear dragon before exhausting myself by running away from it.

** ** **

So what do we have to work with here? There's a river, a raft, a span of years, and a metaphorical beast guarding a golden treasure. Yep, that's the writing life (and the story), and I'm still in it.

Red leaf. Gap. Translation.

See that red leaf up above? It's so much more beautiful in person than in the photo.

I wanted to write a blog post, but nothing was coming to me.

I didn't have any words tonight, but I had a nice little collection of items on my desk hutch (which serves as part catch-all, part altar of favorite things). So I took a picture, first with my iPhone, but that didn't do it justice. Next I broke out the big girl camera (the DSLR), but even that didn't really capture the essence of my lovely little view. I could have fiddled with things -- changed the lighting (as much as one can change the lighting at 2:23am), or tried a different camera setting (though, truth be told, I don't know how to use most of my camera settings), or popped the photo into PicMonkey and tried to edit it into something more representative of the image and mood I wanted to create.

But the gap between what I saw and the image I captured, well, the experience of that gap gave me a few words.

I thought: Sometimes there's a gap.

A gap between what we see in front of us and the photograph we're capable of taking. A gap between the the way an experience feels inside of us, or the way an unborn poem sounds in our heart, and the way we translate it into words on paper. Part of this has to do with the gap between our taste in art and our ability to create art, especially in the beginning. (Ira Glass explains more about this gap in this video. This concept has been so important to me in staying sane with my own creative pursuits. Seriously, watch the video.)

But part of the gappage is about that word: translation. I think making art (with words or images or anything) is about translating something that exists somewhere else (either inside of us or beyond us). What a crazy hard thing to do!

Yes, crazy hard sometimes, but still the only thing that makes sense to those of us who are called to create.

I wasn't thinking about any of this as I looked around for something to write about and came up with a photograph instead. I like when thoughts and mini-essays slink out of the shadows like that. "The world is everywhere whispering essays," indeed.

And if it weren't now 2:39am, I might even expand on this everyday essay. But I'm just about out of words for the night, and sleep beckons.

What's your gap or inspiration these days?