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Working Words

Home Sweet Office
by Cindy La Ferle

Today, many parents idealize the option of working at home. The reality rests somewhere between confusion and perfection...

Literally speaking, I'm moving up in the world. My editorial office isn't in the basement anymore. Last year I acquired a handsome cherry-wood desk and, be it ever so humble, a first-floor room with a view.

On my desk I've arranged a few of my favorite things, including a framed photo of my son when he was four. On a shelf nearby, in the shadow of my IBM computer, an Underwood manual typewriter adds its wry touch of irony. And in plain view, I've posted a quote from Jon Kabat-Zinn's Wherever You Go, There You Are (Hyperion): "In every moment, we find ourselves at the crossroads of here and now."

The here and now -- my son's childhood, in particular -- is why I decided several years ago to practice journalism from home.

And while I can't imagine writing anywhere else, I had to navigate a few confusing crossroads to arrive at this place. Like Dorothy, I figured Oz was anywhere but home.

After college, I was employed in the production department of a major reference book publisher, where I finally learned that making books for others wasn't quite as much fun as writing your own. Later, during my five-year stint as a travel magazine editor, I was assigned rented office space in a large chemical company. Visitors were alarmed to discover, as I was, that the rooms in which my staff and I worked often smelled of acetone or sulfur.

The birth of my only child inspired romantic dreams of blending parenthood with freelance journalism, though I wasn't quite ready to leave the corporate world and its regular paychecks.

But fate had other plans. By the time my son turned six, the travel magazine had folded due to sagging advertising revenues. Journalism jobs in the Detroit area, where I live, were hard to land (thanks to an historic newspaper strike). And so, while it sounded daring at first, my big move down to the damp basement of our 1920's home was also my last resort.

Still, I had a handful of editorial contacts and, gratefully, my husband's financial support. Writing, I told myself, was something you could easily do at home while your kid was napping or building Lego castles. I was wrong about the easy part ...

To the parent who's eager to combine office work with homemaking, setting up shop at a kid's craft table next to the laundry room might sound vaguely convenient. But this was not what Virginia Woolf had in mind when she wrote about establishing a room of one's own. In retrospect, my Basement Era was a metaphor for the way I undervalued my work at the time.

In those days I found it difficult to split myself cheerfully between Professional Writer and Perfect Mom. My desk in the basement was frequently littered with my son's early science experiments. Settling in to write, I'd find gooey concoctions of blue paint and Play-Doh in what used to be my paper-clip holder. My scissors and rolls of tape mysteriously disappeared. Meanwhile, the dryer kept buzzing ...

Following intense negotiations, my son and I reviewed the definition of boundaries as well as the importance of establishing them. It was a good lesson for us both.

Now that I've moved my office upstairs to a small den at the end of the house, I take myself -- and my work -- more seriously. My son, who's still in grade school, respects my new office, and usually remembers to ask before he borrows my supplies. He also enjoys helping me with clerical projects, periodically surprising me with his budding skill as a proofreader.

Even so, there have been other things to iron out. My income as a freelance newspaper columnist and magazine writer is several thousand dollars short of what it was when I was employed full-time. Thankfully, the family has graciously agreed to lower their financial expectations -- but I still need an occasional pep talk.

And there are other, more delicate, issues to ponder before you wildly embrace this lifestyle.

You'll find that some people expect even more from women who work at home. Casseroles, clean bathrooms, car pools, free baby-sitting, and best-selling novels are supposed to be a cinch when you've got all that "extra time" on your hands. Then there's the sore issue of baked goods for school parties. Since I'm baking impaired, I told one of my son's teachers that I'd happily volunteer to conduct children's writing workshops -- but I don't do cupcakes.

Then there's the sticky issue of what other people think. As much as we'd like to believe all of our choices are acceptable, our culture remains stubbornly corporate. I know of several working mothers in my neighborhood -- the sharp-looking ones who drive off to work in Liz Claiborne suits every morning at 7:00 -- who are a little suspicious of my lifestyle. I've heard that one thinks I'm single-handedly trying to tear up the foundations of the feminist movement. Others wonder if I'm at the mall every day. The ones who don't read my newspaper column doubt that I do anything at all. (One of these women never bothered to speak to me at neighborhood block parties -- until she happened to notice my byline in Reader's Digest.)

My advice? Forget about what other people think. And guard your hours as fiercely as you nurture your
self-esteem.

"Some people flourish with the freedom from old structures, and other people flounder," writes Paul Edwards in Working from Home (Tarcher, Inc.).

As Edwards notes, a freelancer usually misses out on promotions as well as office camaraderie. Until last year, for instance, my local newspaper editor kept forgetting to invite me to the office Christmas party, even though my column appears in his paper as frequently as articles by his staff reporters. I was home alone, too, on the buoyant Friday afternoon I learned that I'd won first place in a statewide press association contest.

Most of the time, though, I'm willing to forfeit the parties and the gossip for a sense of place and peace.

Weekday mornings are blissful. After my husband and son leave for work and school respectively, I pour my first cup of coffee and settle in at my desk. Before I begin my first three hours of writing, I gaze out my office windows and watch for neighbors taking their morning stroll. There's always a parade of devoted walkers -- mostly retirees and a few young moms with babies in tow. An older gentleman occasionally looks toward my window and waves, silently acknowledging the kinship we share on these clear, bright mornings.

This ritual is part of what I call my "mindfulness work habit." Like meditation, it paves the way for a gentler
rhythm, so different from the frantic pace that was encouraged in the corporate world where I was trained.

Now, whenever I'm nearly immobilized by writer's block, I leave the house (guilt-free) to ride my mountain bike. I clear my mind of the paragraph that refused to budge or the sentence that wouldn't untangle, observing instead the landscape along my route. Just as Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests, I try to think of myself "as an eternal witness," which makes me a more careful writer -- and a wiser parent.

Once in a while, I'll gossip on the phone with an editor who sits in a cluttered newsroom in Boston, or exchange e-mail with another newspaper columnist who works from home with two preschoolers in Roanoke. And I try to make time to conduct community writing workshops, or simply to visit friends. Having endured a few soggy bouts of winter depression, I've learned that connecting with other writers and mothers nudges me out of the mugginess of self-absorption.

And in no time at all, my morning writing hours morph into afternoon hours. At 2:55 the back door routinely bursts open; my son arrives home from school, sometimes with a friend.

"Hey Mom! Where are you? We're here!"...

Within minutes, our once-quiet household throbs with noisy young energy. My last train of thought, my hard-won concentration, is derailed. The writer inside me isn't ready to quit now, but the lonesome parent welcomes the wild company -- and knows she's incredibly lucky.

"Home Sweet Office" was originally published in "Detroit Metropolitan Woman."

_______________

Royal Oak, Michigan, resident Cynthia La Ferle is an award-winning newspaper columnist and author of Old Houses, Good Neighbors (Self-Reliance Press). Her work has appeared in Writer's Digest, The Christian Science Monitor, Reader's Digest, Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion, Unity Magazine, and many others. You can visit her website at www.laferle.com and she can be contacted at cindy@laferle.com

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