Can't Think of a Title -- I'm on Vacation

Well, day two of my vacation, and I've still managed to keep that proposal at bay. This is a good sign, because I'm assuming this evening and tomorrow I'll be way too busy to even check my email. That means I can pat myself on the back for managing to be somewhat successful at this vacation-as-a-telecommuter business. Of course, the other side of that is that I'll probably be driven crazy by extended exposure to family members and will want to disappear into the world of work for refuge. I'll have to find some place to hide out in order to do this, though, because I can't imagine my parents and in-laws being too pleased about my sitting around with a laptop attached to my lap while they're trying to have a conversation with me.

That brings me to the topic of laptops and work space. Read anything any women's magazine has to say about working from home, and the number one rule is always: establish an office space in your home, and don't deviate from it. I'm a rule-breaker by nature, as long as I won't get into too much trouble if caught, but this one actually seemed like a sound one, not worth breaking. I diligently went about setting up my office space at home, taking over half of what used to be my husband's study, buying file drawers for my files, and setting up bookcases for my books. I did all that, only to discover that one of the problems I've probably always had with work is being confined to an office space. I need variety. I need to move around. I used to spend an awful lot of time on the job getting up and walking around, and now I realize, I was probably doing that in order to escape that feeling of confinement.

Here's where the glory of the laptop comes into play. I'll start out in my "office" early every morning, but by mid-morning, I'll find I've usually moved downstairs to the comfy old Pier One chair in the room we call The Santa Fe room (most people would call it the Florida room, as it's mostly windows, but we have tons of southwestern stuff out there, and we both hate Florida, so we had to call it something different). It's a wonderful place to sit, whether it's rainy or snowy or sunny. If I get tired of that spot, I'll move into the living room and plop my laptop down on the old secretary I inherited from my mother when she and my father moved houses. One particularly nice day, I even ventured out onto the deck, which wasn't such a good idea, as sunlight and computer screens don't work too well without rigging up umbrellas that have a tendency to blow down with the slightest breeze.

I know. I know. This moving around and taking work all over the place feeds into a tendency to never stop working -- to never separate work life from home life. That's the main reason the articles advise against it. I think those articles, though, are just written by people stuck in offices, jealous of those of us who are sitting out on sunny decks.