Transitions, Darkness and Working at Home

Here we go again: transition time at Of Woods and Words. Not counting the many, many seasonal changes we have each year, we go through two major transitions annually: when I go to work full-time out of the house each May, and when I starting working from home again each October. Both transition periods have their hiccups, but arguably the autumn transition back to working from home is more difficult because I feel a need to transform myself into homemaker extraordinaire, freelancer extraordinaire, and Etsy extraordinaire, while also attending to the demands of my day job. (Whew! I'm just glad there aren't pets or children in that mix!)

Full time work officially ended last Sunday and over the last eight days, I've been bouncing between home and work, trying to get everything set so I can truly start working from by the end of this week. The first week after closing up for the season is always discombobulated: the last board meeting of the season, packing up the building, moving the office to the cabin, and making sure everything's set to over winter without freezing, shattering, or being gnawed on by vermin.


It's really easy to be way too hard on yourself during these times of transition. I've been sleeping far too much this past week. Despite my best intentions to get up and at it before sunrise, it's so dark in the mornings, and the bed is so awfully warm and cozy, that by the time I drag myself out from the covers each morning, I already feel like I'm behind.

It doesn't help my motivation that I devoted last Monday morning to making an editorial calendar for myself which when completed, I looked at and went "Holy shite, no wonder I'm always feel like I'm forgetting something." Even when I drop my day job obligations from 40 hours a week to a mere 16, I'm still over-scheduled. So perhaps before I move forward much farther during this work at home season, I need to figure out some ways to work smarter, rather than harder.(I.e. make more money while either doing the same, or less work.)

Then there's the fact that Baja went to shop last Thursday and was given a 4K diagnosis (why hullo there new transmission, clutch, timing belt, et al.) from a very reputable mechanic. After weighing just about every option out there (declaring a total loss, car loans, becoming a one car household, etc. etc.) we're repairing it since that's most economical and environmentally conscious thing to do, which means I'm not exactly in a position to pass up any paying work that I can get. Whenever I claim that there's some conspiracy against my using motorized equipment, Andy says I'm being silly. But honestly, even my KitchenAid mixer exploded after only two years of use. It's fine. It's really getting rather amusing by this point.

In the last 15 days, I think the sun's shone about seven whole hours and we're all feeling a little gloomy. I forgot I even had Halloween decorations until I was cleaning the back bedroom on Saturday and happened upon the holiday decorations box in the closet. Yesterday, it snowed all morning (and actually stuck to the ground and accumulated), so it's been a little confusing what season it actually is. Most likely, with Halloween being just two days away now, the Halloween decorations will spend all of 2012 hibernating away in the closet.

Although it's a rather dark, bumpy transition time at the moment, I'm trying not to focus on what hasn't been getting done, and instead focus on what I have been accomplishing. Suppers are certainly tastier now that I have a little more time to devote meal prep and the house is at its tidiest in months. And look, I even created an Etsy shipping corner in the back bedroom! It's about the little things . . . right? Quality of living is definitely improving around here.

Certainly, there's a need to bump up productivity. I just have to remember that being kind to myself as the seasonal darkness creeps in, and creating light from within rather than being dependent on sunshine and long days to elevate my mood, is probably the best way to make the annual transition into working from home go smoothest.

 

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Going in Circles

Earlier this month, I wrote about the cyclical nature of seasonal employment. Despite realizing that switching between two jobs and lifestyles each year is a process not dissimilar to going through the complete cycle of grief biannually, this go-around, I'm having trouble adjusting. When I mentioned how odd I was finding this fall's transition back to working from home, my friend Sarah pointed out that this might just be because there's nothing "new" about the transition. 

While this was my second summer at the museum, I'm used to my summers repeating themselves. It's what I've done in the winter that's been different every single year since I graduated college. This is the first time in a long time that my life has completely repeated itself over the course of an entire year. I'm literally going in circles.

This is not a bad thing. But it's a little disorienting.

"Didn't I just go past that rock last October?"

Granted, the museum's only just closed on Sunday and this is actually my first "normal workday" morning that I've spent at home. Still, some things have changed around here. For instance, just yesterday morning I had a desk.

(Granted, it's not really my desk. For one thing it's a table. For another, it actually belongs to Andy's mother.)

Now? Not so much.

Let's look closer at what's going on here. What once contained some houseplants, reference books, notebooks, stationary and a laptop, suddenly sprouted a desktop computer, a ginormous printer/scanner/copier, and many, many more piles of, um, "files" yesterday afternoon. 

While I've complained about my less than tidy desk before, it's really the winter months when desk space is most at a premium around here. Because during the off-season I work a few hours a week for the historical society that operates the museum, I end up adopting several pieces of office equipment on a seasonal basis for a couple reasons: 1) so it doesn't freeze in the museum 2) to avoid spending half my day transferring files.

There are about a gazillion things I could spend this first morning working from home doing. But something tells me, if I don't get this clutter straightened out, I'll spend the day going in circles. And while, I might feel fine about going in circles annually, during a work day "going in circles" is really just code for "spinning your wheels."

Can you work in clutter? What do you do to make transitions easier?

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