Dream Life

I had drinks with my friend Katie last night. Katie's leaving her job in a month, and is planning on taking some time to just do project work before settling into her next full-time gig. I think Katie works kind of like I do: makes work a part of her identity. I have a tendency to lay awake at night, worrying about work.

We were talking about what it is that I do all day, and how I like working from home and taking in chunks of money wherever I can, and I think I started to gush a little. There are definitely days in which I've watched too much TV and not gone on enough walks, and days when I don't get a lot of work done because it's hard to get into the mindset when you're not in an office, but after almost a YEAR of unsteady employment, I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I'll be back at a desk, full-time, soon.

(Bank of America has pretty much told me I have to be.)

I'm hoping that when that happens, I don't need to give up the projects I've come to enjoy. There's this sporadically-updated blog, there's my business idea, there's the idea that I can make dinner, there's the knowledge that people can get substantive work done in coffee shops.

My friend Curtis lives his work, and seldom in an office. He has his laptop with him at all times, and when he's on it you never know if he's creating the first non-sucking expense report or if he's reading his never-ending RSS feed. He kind of has the ideal situation: he ENJOYS working in the middle of the night, because work is satisfying to him. His work is also his hobby, and his interest.

I want that.

And then today I read something on Facebook that bothered me, and made me feel, a little bit, like that's out of reach for people like me. You know how today, everyone was posting those two sentences about healthcare? ("No one should die because they cannot afford healthcare; no one should go broke because they get sick.") A good friend of mine--someone who I consider myself to be very much like--changed her status to say that she wasn't sure we should be talking about serious things on Facebook, and that she misses when it was fun.

Fifteen comments ensued, of course, and most of them were a discussion about for what purposes people use Twitter versus Facebook. It was commonly acknowledged that people tweet about things that are serious or related to their job, and use Facebook for casual, funny conversation.

That's an acknowledgment that they're hiding part of who they are.

Maybe I'm just always repressed because I know my bosses and work friends are amongst my Facebook friends, but do they really think that when I leave work, I'm reading nothing but industry reports? And if something about my work is interesting, and I write about that, will my friends not think it's interesting, too?

I'm friends with a lot of ambitious people, and I understand being guarded when it comes to your professional life, but you kill a good work-life balance if you're constantly self-censoring out of fear that someone will think less of you for being multi-dimensional. And, frankly, no one wants to network with a hack.

Yep. My time at home has given me some perspective.