When the salt mine is home

I love the fact that I have a home office where I occupy myself with the daily tasks of writing, blogging and social networking in order to promote the writing and blogging.

But the most difficult part of a home office is that it's located at home.

It's not the distractions that are bothersome. I don't have a fix-it bone in my body, so I'm neither compelled nor distracted to do anything related to painting or fixing a leaky faucet or changing the filter in the furnace or anything like that. I'm fairly disciplined about the tasks at hand. I approach the writing with a deadline in mind, the way I did as a reporter in what seems like a lifetime ago.

I have a few distractions -- the guitars and piano in the office that beg to be played. I can call up Fancast on my computer and watch old episodes of "Spenser: For Hire" with Robert Urich and Avery Brooks. I can cruise the web to my heart's delight, all in the name of research.

The real problem with working at home isn't the occasional distraction, it's the fact you're home all the time.

I used to have a salt mine to go to every day. You know the drill: You get up each morning and prepare to commute to the salt mine to do battle in the work-a-day world of meetings, telephone calls, emails, fires to put out, action plans to strategize. After a day in the mine, you'd return to your sanctuary, your home, the place of rest and rejuvenation.

But now when I commute to the office it's down the hall and to the right. I can do the commute in my jammies and flip-flops, carrying the mug of coffee I just poured in the kitchen. There's no official start time, and there's no official quitting time. The rest and rejuvenation of being home gets a little muddy as it mixes with the need to wander into the office to check my DIGG account after dinner to see how much activity there's been through the day.

There is no rest for the home office weary.

Which is why I can't wait to get out of the house. I look forward to the walk to the end of the driveway to get the morning newspapers. The same is true in the afternoon when I walk out to get the mail. When I go to the gym I extend my workout far longer than I ever did when I was working at an office.

This need sometimes competes with my wife Jane's needs. By the weekend, I'll have a need to escape from the house where I've been at work all week, while she'll have a need to nest in the house because she has a salt mine that she's been going to during the week.

We are scheduled to be away this weekend and next. I am looking forward to packing a bag, pulling together my toiletries, picking out a book for the road. I won't miss the home office for a few days, but I'll bring along the laptop and Blackberry to write and blog and network when I get the chance. When you have a home office, you can leave the home but sometimes the office has to travel.