Working from “home”

I’m in my first week of “working from home.” It should have been my second week, but week one was so wildly unsuccessful that for the few moments that I was actually at home I barely turned on my computer.

In addition to struggling with the “working” component of the “working from home” concept, I haven’t really figured out the “home” component either, as I don’t actually have one. I have a nice spare room in Beck’s house where I sleep and keep my clothes, and I perch my laptop on the kitchen bench and call it an office. Once I have more permanent digs I’ll set myself up with a desk and maybe even an ergonomic chair.

For someone who has never worked from home, and didn’t necessarily covet it as my dream work situation (I quite like having an office and people to have lunch with), I know an awful lot about the challenges one may face. See, the organisational/lifehack blogging community, of which I am a dedicated follower, tends also to be a work-from-home/freelance/entrepreneuring community too.

So when I woke up yesterday and decided to delay getting dressed (until…ummm…5pm), I considered the debate about getting dressed before starting work to clearly dileaniate the beginning of a work day. When I kept working until 9pm the other night because I’d faffed around during the day, that rang a bell too.

But in amongst all of these grey areas, I know one thing for sure about working from home – It’s AWESOME! I mean, I already mentioned the perk about not having to get dressed, but did you know that if I do choose to get dressed, I can wear tracksuit pants and sneakers! And when it’s time for lunch I have the whole fridge to choose from and….helloooo daytime TV!

I’ll probably be ready to get back into a more, ummm, dynamic work environment eventually, but for now I couldn’t imagine a better way to get paid.

Farewell by the River

Today my office colleagues bid me farewell with lunch at my favourite river restaurant, Kin Lom Chom Saphan (which translates to Eat Breeze View Bridge…Keep reading and you will see why).

Flaminia keeps it real

Ting Ting, Flaminia, Me and Ju

Modelling for photos before the food arrives

Don't you wish you'd thought of that?!

Then the food arrived...

...and we never looked back

Delicious fish

Half the team

The other half (and the brilliant Hannah in the bottom right corner)

Bringing down the house with a speech

Two thirds of my programme team, Anya and Sarah

Eat Breeze View Bridge

The Tuesday Turn Around

Don’t worry everyone…I’m BACK IN BUSINESS!

Where was Sarah? I was stuck in bed for two days with some stupid illness! But I told that stupid illness to take a hike (it just took me a couple of days to convey the message clearly), and I’m back in the office and ready to rumble.

And guess what else? My stats have gone and sailed past the magic 10,000! Thank you to all those who helped me reach my goal. Oh gosh, I was just so happy to have been nominated…

But now I am going to bring a new meaning to ‘knuckle down’ and work like focused person for the next three days before I board the Good Ship Melbourne-Bound on Thursday night.

Making sense of my Saturday

Today is so odd. I know I have a few things to take care of before I move next Thursday but I’m not sure where to start. I had a dream last night about leaving Bangkok, but Bangkok was a small regional city in a country where the capital was Jakarta. My office was similar to my real office, but had a look about it that reminded me of a luxury hotel and a much better view (I could see Jakarta). My apartment closet (that I keep my clothes in) was located in my office so when it was time to finish work and fly back to Australia (via Jakarta) I was running late and hadn’t even taken the clothes from my closet and packed them in my suitcase. Then I realised I’d forgotten to book my flight anyway.

Anxious dreams about missing flights are not uncommon for me. Usually they seem to be reflecting anxiety I have about something that could just as well be related to travel as to anything else, but this time I have a real flight to catch which makes the symbolism even more obvious. Also, someone asked me yesterday what day I was flying out and I said, “Thursday night.” Then they asked what my last day of work would be and I said, “Thursday.” Then this group of people standing around told me that was a dumb idea and I need to take a day off. I don’t need to take a day off, but their words got lodged in my mind somewhere and made me worry that I needed to take a day off. Proof positive of the power of words to affect our subconscious I suppose. I think that was another reason for my dream. Running from the office to the plane was a really bad thing in my dream. In reality there will be about four hours between my finishing work and leaving for the airport.

My anxious dreams used to be about being late for my Friday night shift at the bookshop. They even continued for a few years after I stopped working in bookshops. Sometimes I would be hours or days late to my Friday night shift at the bookshop, but I was still trying to get there. Then one night I had a dream that I was running late for the bookshop and I saw Greg who was running late for work at the library. We both sat down on the curb and decided it wasn’t that big a deal anyway, and we’d just skip work that night. That was the last bookshop anxiety dream I had, and so began the ‘missing the plane’ anxiety dreams. Once I was in an airport terminal and got stuck in the China terminal and couldn’t make my way back to the France terminal. That was really confusing.

So now it’s Saturday and I know my mind is anxious about getting organised, but I don’t really have that much to organise. I have a lot to do, I don’t know how I will fit it all in, but it’s pretty straightforward. I’m pretty sure my subconscious is overreacting – but whose doesn’t from time to time?

I came over to Wawee Coffee just now to use their internet because I’ve been waiting for a call from my landlord who has been hard to pin down and remembered that she wanted to use email, so I needed to check email too – she’s probably the greatest source of anxiety. I got here and five minutes later she sent me a text message telling me when we can meet, which makes it easier to plan the rest of my weekend now.

So now that my greatest source of anxiety is more predictable, rather than spending more of the time talking about my dreams, I’ll head back to my apartment and start packing.

I like my name in books

An unexpected perk of my job is that sometimes I get credited as the editor of a book! It seems so….professional!

I purposfully made the words too small to read...

Editing finished, time for dinner!

If you're feeling happy...

If I was four years old and could wear yellow without looking washed out I would look just like Abby right now. My editing job is finished!

To celebrate I am going to eat Italian, which I’ve been dreaming about since I quickly ducked out of my work session at TCDC on Sunday to see Bread and Tulips at the Italian Film Festival. The film was so great! And I got to see it with two REAL Italians! (I even surprised us all by how much Italian I knew – a teensy tiny bit, but that’s still more than I thought).

How do you feel today? (if you’re feeling happy then clap your hands)

Last night, instead of having a restful, peaceful sleep my brain decided to do a very thorough evaluation of project I’m working on, in interpretive dream sequences. This could have been helpful for the report I’m writing at the moment, but it was nonsense and I’ve forgotten most of it. So today, how do I feel?

Dear couch, please allow me to melt into you. I'm so, so very sleepy.

Just in time, the royal family is coming to the rescue! It’s Coronation Day today, and while we’re not taking the day off like the rest of the country, we have been granted early release! 3pm = home time!

My plans for the afternoon, which I’ve decided to take off (i.e. not work from home or a cafe), include:

• Sushi
• Haircut
• Manicure
• Run

I wonder how many of these I will actually achieve! The anticipation is overwhelming! Tune into the non-stop action-packed world of Where Is Sarah? tomorrow to find out…

Office Opression

Wow! The strangest thing just happened to me.

I’ve got a report to write. It’s the final report for our big project. But now that it’s time to knuckle down and write I’m getting everything else done but the report. That website I’ve been chipping away on for too long? Done! That review of someone else’s report? Done! Organising my files? DONE!

It’s been great for ‘to do’ list, but not excellent for the report.

I could tell I was turning my office into a zone of procrastinator hell where the vibe is a constant reminder of what you’re NOT doing — which is pretty much the most effective way to make sure you keep NOT doing it — but I didn’t know how to make it stop!

I’ve been looking out the window for a couple of days. Not just gazing, but specifically looking at the courtyard in my building and thinking that I needed to go there. But I pushed on and kept staring at the screen, staying the course, willing, begging words to be typed. This afternoon I decided to go down for just as long as my laptop battery would last. Maybe 30 mins? (It’s a crappy battery)

You won’t believe it…

Within a minute of sitting down words came spilling out of my brain! One of those words was obfuscation! No kidding!

What’s even weirder is that it’s 40 degrees outside! I can work better in 40 degree heat than my stupid bad vibe office! And my apartment is just as bad. I don’t think it’s my office or my apartment specifically, I think it’s indoors!

Can I realistically cultivate a working life that allows me to spend it outdoors? I can’t even begin to figure out the problems I’ll face with power cables.

And what about the weather? I seem to have developed a super human resistance to heat (I was wearing jeans and a scarf in the courtyard) but at the expense of my resistance to cold. When I was in Melbourne last September it was pretty cool for Spring, but I actually cried one day as I walked down the street. The cold was so hurty! It stings! Does that mean I will need to live in hot climates forever just because I want to work outdoors? I find that unacceptably limiting.

For now I will just find a nice outdoor place to work over the weekend and see if I can figure out the trajectory of my life later.

In the media

A couple of articles from last week about some of the work my organisation* is doing:

COMMENT: The challenge of pluralism – Farish A Noor, Daily Times

Conference urges revision of Islamic Jurisprudence, Jakarta Post

*organisation is conveniently not mentioned

No really…where is Sarah?

Work is a bit nuts lately so I’ve had no time to post. I just got back from a few days in Jakarta where I had very little internet access (why is it so hard to use internet at business hotels?). The craziness continues for the next few weeks, but here are a few photos from the last little while demonstrating that life is not all work and no play.

Jess playing Eskimo. This booth was advertising a new toothpaste. It was temperature controlled and smelled minty fresh!

Yupa at 6.30am on a Sunday. Waiting for the train to Kanchanaburi...that never came. We all went back to bed.

On the way home from work

Performers from Nias at CFAN in Jakarta

Look at this guy's cheek!