Every time I saw someone in the office, with a laptop or a blackberry, I used to feel jealous. They looked so damn cool. They did not have to raise PC requests. Their CD drives were functional. They could access their emails from anywhere etc. As cliched as it may sound, the fact is that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence !! So as you must have guessed, these misconceptions vanished a week or two after I got my laptop a couple of years back. I was now permanently available to work, to respond to emails etc. The only time I could escape, was when I was driving to and from work.
Then I started envying people who worked from home. They did not have to travel all the way to work. They could wake up when they wanted to, take bath when they wanted (and if they wanted to), they did not have to wear formals everyday, no shoes (in US) and so on (may sound silly to you, but they meant a lot to me). And now I know how wrong I was in wanting that !! I seem to have the knack to always want the wrong things in life or atleast, only when I wish for wrong things is my wish granted !!
Now I have been working from home for more than a month. So what is wrong? I am a positive person (or so I would like to think) and I don't mean only my bloodgroup. So let me start with the good points :
- I can wear a salwar kurta when I work
- I don't have to comb my hair every day
- I can eat food out of a plate instead of from a tiffin-box
- I don't have to meet with people
- I don't have to spend money or time on commuting to work.
- No shoes required
- I remain silent most of the time.
So what's wrong with it?
- I am cooking 3 times a day
- I don't see people
- I am turning to something like a UFO (heard of but never seen)
- I never 'go home' after work. An hour, a day, a week - are all like the next
- I feel guilty when I go for grocery shopping, since I am 'missing work'
- All days are workdays. A workday is 18 hours long.
- My phone's receiver is losing weight instead of me. I swear that once when I took the receiver from my ear, I found my dislodged ear attached to the phone. I then had to use some 'Made in China' glue to stick it back in position. You will believe when you see me and find one ear slightly differently positioned compared to the other.
- I am forgetting how my voice sounds, except when I chat with people at home
- I have no place to run to, when I receive my daily call from my manager telling me how disappointed he is in me. I would like to have a team-member to shout at too.
My habit of wishing to be like people older or more experienced than me or different from me, has more often than not, led to all my disappointments in life. As a child, I remember always wanting to grow up and get out of school, so that I would not have daily homework, or to write any assignments or tests or examinations or wear uniforms. I thought taking a book or a single notebook and wearing clothes of your choice was cool and longed for college. In college, I wished to become financially independent and longed to start working. Now I would give anything for the life of a student, a life with a lot of certainty (again, you see I am wishing for something out of my reach !!)
Give me home-work any day. I would prefer that infinitely to working from home !!
