The Jammy Brigade

Whenever I meet another fortunate soul who works at home, it takes about 3.2 seconds to chuckle together about the very best part of the situation -- working in our jammies. My daily work is delivered to me by DHL, and I don't think any DHL driver has ever seen me dressed (on the rare occasions he even sees me). My neighbors, I'm sure, assume that I am disabled to the point of being incapable of dressing myself, since I often toddle down the street to the mailbox at noon... still in my jammies. Actually, in the summer months, they should be grateful that I'm even wearing jammies, since my daytime attire is, shall we say, much flimsier.

I tried to provide quantitative data on the current number of home workers In the US, but, A) I don't do statistics since they intrinsically involve numbers, and B) the Department of Labor tables I did find were so minuscule I couldn't see them on the screen, let alone interpret them. I did find that in 2004 it was estimated that 20 million people worked at home, either as employees or in their own businesses, and I heard this morning on the Today show that the number is now estimated to be 40% of the work force.

That's a LOT of jammies!

If the clothing manufacturers were paying attention, we'd see a proliferation of comfy clothing designed for the work-at-home crowd -- something a tad more presentable than silk knit pajamas imprinted with little blue dogs. I suppose velour sweat pants with a matching jacket would do... but that's entirely too much like getting dressed for me.

When I was still playing the corporate executive game, I spent a LOT of money on business attire -- and I even remember budgeting 30 minutes each morning to "accessorize." Jesus! I still have all those scarves, necklaces, brooches and doodads... stuffed in a box, high in my closet. My only concession to accessories these days is to clean my glasses on alternate Tuesdays.

One of my sons recently joined the jammy brigade and rapidly discovered the blessings of working at home, although he is an employee, not an entrepreneur, and the dynamic is a bit different. He's tethered to his Blackberry, where I'm free to not answer the damn phone if I so choose. He is able to answer email while running household errands, but that wouldn't work for me since they make you turn off your cell phone in movie theaters. Yes, I sneak out to the movies as often as there's something worth viewing, (Charlie Wilson's War, for instance.)

I know that, for me, productivity is overwhelmingly greater working at home, but it also requires a bit more self-discipline than working in an office. There aren't the same distractions at home (15 people stopping by to say hi, bring you a donut or sit on your desk to bitch and gossip), but the distractions are there. For instance, my refrigerator is only 18 paces away, which is NOT a good thing. The nearest bathroom, however, is only nine feet from my desk, which saves, I'm sure, at least an hour a day in traveling time.

In the summer I get distracted by the LOUD chattering of magpies and jays in the oak tree next door, and in the winter the drama of wind and rain draws me away from my small office window to the wider vista from my living room. During last week's storm (you heard about it on national news) I counted each of the five billion oak leaves that sailed into my yard, then wondered where I could get sandbags if the rain didn't stop. (It did..)

The Internet, of course, is the biggest distraction -- but that's not limited to those working at home. In 2005, it was estimated that fooling around on the Internet cost American businesses $178 billion in lost productivity -- and certainly by now that number is even higher. That surely beats the numbers from previous decades of money lost around the water cooler.

I'll admit the Internet is my biggest downfall -- from email to blogging to stopping by a chat room, to just plain surfing. Since my income depends on meeting contractual deadlines, however, it's not the problem it may be for others... particularly employees. A business-owner friend recently installed stealth software and found one employee spending nearly six hours daily on Yahoo, and another employee playing Internet games a couple of hours each day -- or maybe I should say former employees.

Home workers do have genuine isolation to deal with, but some of us treasure that above all. Those who miss interaction manage to stay electronically connected with the outside world, and often stay more connected with their families, who are sometimes underfoot.

The lack of a daily commute is a huge all-around benefit to working at home. Maybe we who work in our jammies deserve a "green" tax credit for our smaller carbon footprints... or maybe not paying that $3.25/gallon price is reward enough. I'm down to one tank of gas a month, but then I enjoy atypical, official "hermit" status. My fuel consumption will be reduced further once spring hits, since I plan to take my granny cart and hike the two miles to the grocery store. I only hope I remember to change from my jammies to jeans.

Well, nice chatting with you. I have to start a load of laundry, empty the dishwasher, take a shower and put on fresh jammies and, oh yes, get to work.

Stress 101 Cliff Notes

Except for a Trappist monk or Carmelite nun, I live probably the most stress-free life in America...seriously. It's a state I've cultivated and nurtured for the last 14 years, since life in the corporate world pushed my blood pressure up to Himalayan levels, and it was either reduce the stress or call the Garden Of Memories for their next available plot.

I'm certainly not in the advice business...since I refuse to take it from anyone else, I'm in no position to give it. I am, however, going to list a few things that I think have qualified me to write the opening sentence of this posting. Like anything else worthwhile in life, stress reduction takes some thought, planning and a few conscious decisions... plus time to actually make these changes happen. Some of them may work for you -- others you may think are completely nuts and, by association, that I'm a complete nutcase. I may be... but I'm a non-stressed-out nutcase. So there.

Job stress? I quit my job and started a profitable home business. It's possible... millions are doing it and more join the ranks every day. In one sweet fell swoop I eliminated "the boss" by becoming one. I work my own hours, the money I bring in is MY money, not some corporation's, my jammies are my work clothes and my 24-foot commute doesn't require a drop of $3.50/gallon gas. There are a few downsides, but stress isn't one of them. For me, the benefits have been incredible.

Financial stress? I've learned to live to my needs, not my wants. This doesn't mean I don't dally on ebay and Amazon, but reducing my consumption of "stuff" and slipping down a rung or two on the lifestyle ladder have been good in more ways than financially. This was also a package deal for me -- cutting back on buying also means cutting back on shopping -- which is a HUGE stressor for me. I know it's recreational and even a necessity for a lot of women, but I'm not one of 'em.

Noise stress. After eliminating from my life the unethical assholes I worked for, this was the second most important stressor, but one of the hardest to achieve. This may not apply to anyone else, but I suspect I'm not the only one whom noise makes crazy...if you don't agree, maybe you just don't realize its impact. Noise is EVERYWHERE. I'm convinced that our hunter/gatherer brains are not hardwired for all the input we receive every single minute of the day, unless we consciously control it. I DVR every single thing I watch on TV - no exception. And before God wrought the DVR, I VCR'd everything, primarily to skip the horrendous burden of commercials. Remember the good old days when a commercial break meant one or two ads, just time enough to grab a Hostess cupcake from the kitchen? Now there can be up to 10 ads during each break, and a break every 3 minutes, each with its own mind-numbing music/graphics/narration/video. I miss it all -- and it only delays my (questionable) viewing pleasure for 15 minutes, or so. Now if I could just figure out how to block out the canned music in every single store, restaurant and elevator in the world.

People stress. Nancy Reagan had this one right.. I just say NO. It wasn't hard to learn and I didn't even need to practice it in front of a mirror. N. O. No thanks. No, I'm sorry. I'd really like to, but No, I can't. This may be one of the occasions in life where a little lie is okay for the greater good. This one works for me because I'm a hard-core introvert -- extroverts may not ever be able to say no to social occasions or companionship, but I find it easy and necessary. No thanks, I already have plans that day/night/weekend/year. No. Thanks, but no. (Note: This works exceptionally well with telemarketers and other phone solicitors.)

Diet and Exercise -- yeah, you see it everywhere because it's true. Eating well and exercising regularly WORK to help reduce stress. I'm not even tempted by fast food restaurants, and I have so much guilt about eating other junk food that it's just not worth it. I'm not an exercise freak, but I do manage to walk 2-3 miles a day at least five times a week. You just can't beat those little endolphins.

Sleeping...is a problem for many of us, me included, but sleeplessness contributes to daily stress. You certainly don't want to be around cranky me after a bad night. Hypnosis has helped, as do prescription medications. I'm still up a couple of hours at night, but since this has been going on since 1984 I think it just might be chronic. Thank you, God, for pharmaceuticals.

Stress about national/world current events. This is a toughie. I want to stay informed, but "being informed" also means I must read and watch all of the horrific and sleazy occurrences of our daily lives. So, I turn off the news about every three weeks and leave it off for awhile -- catching only headlines online. My political activism and idealism years are behind me, and all that evil and scary stuff does get to me. I call this my ostrich plan -- and while it may be foolish and socially irresponsible, it does reduce my stress. This is the opposite of apathy -- I really care too much about issues and events, but I'm not convinced that worrying about things I can't influence or change does any good, anyway. For those things I can't ignore, I have this blog. (It's free and easy therapy.)

Well, that leaves holiday stress. This holly-jolly season must be near the top of the list of stress-inducers since I've already seen three online articles addressing this problem, and it's not even December yet. Those articles all talked about the things I've already managed above -- with just a few exceptions. My lights get tangled like everyone else's, and all the fattening holiday food is a constant temptation. I get really tired of all the BAD Christmas music that saturates the atmosphere everywhere I go. (Where is it written that every third-rate celebrity must produce an album of Christmas songs? I don't remember seeing "Trigger Taps Out Holiday Melodies" when I was a kid.)

I guess, as in many other aspects of life, the blessed perspective of age itself is a stress-reducer... priorities are clearer, and fewer responsibilities make the holidays lighter. This is one of those times when I wouldn't be 30 again for anything, with all the inherent stress those young-family years include. It's nice now to be "Grandma" and one generation removed from Santa's stand-in.

Now if someone would only invent a non-veggie appetizer with no calories and no fat grams that tasted like, I don't know....yummy food.

Well, who is she, anyway?

A few years ago I competed for and won the paid position of "guest writer" for the Op/Ed page of the newspaper in my former home town on the Central California coast. After having published tons of boring business and technical material, this was at last a glorious opportunity to write monthly opinion articles on absolutely anything I chose -- without worrying about research or fact verification --- something like today's mainstream journalists. At that time my focus was local politics -- laughably incompetent at best, criminal at worst -- but a few other musings found their place in my columns, which were well received.

Assuming that someone, somewhere, some time on the web will be seeing this, welcome to my little corner of the blogosphere.

I'll admit that I've reached the half-century mark, having grown up at the end of the bland, tapioca world of the Eisenhower-Nixon administration. The cold war may have raged, but the overall excitement of the times warmed all the way to tepid.

The hippie-sixties were just beyond my reach as that was not a culture you could enter without the right passport; a few years older, a few years younger put you beyond genuine citizenship. I think something extraordinary really did happen then -- some world-changing shift, some true evolution/revolution -- but instead of reaching its full flower, it simply sowed the seeds for long-term social changes -- few of which we've yet realized, or maybe few of which we've yet had the sense to link to those years. I suspect the perspective of time will allow future historians to relate positive consequences to those years (assuming, of course, there will BE a future.)

I remember the 70's with hazy nostalgia (I may be one of the few who actually CAN remember those years,) and the 80's and 90's for me were filled with family responsibilities and a management position that wrenched my guts yet finally empowered me, thank God, to opt out of corporate lies, larceny and pressure and work for myself, at home.

Now it's just I, my computer, the wild blue jays and magpies I feed, the mice who live in my garage eating the bird seed (and where one has just died, hidden, bequeathing his olfactory insult to the empty box of D-Con,) and maybe you? Stick around -- this might be fun for both of us.