Marsha Robertson checking in…
I’ve been working from my house a lot these days and as thrilling as it can be to wear bedroom slippers all morning, I started to worry that prolonged time in a quiet home office would slowly drive me crazy – wall me in as a prisoner of solitude.
But it’s 2009 and I’ve made a crucial discovery. It’s impossible to be alone.
Like those Verizon Wireless commercials where a network of a thousand people follows a customer from dawn to dusk, I’m surrounded by hundreds of people even when I’m in the bathroom.
Facebook friends are chattering. Twitterers are tweating. My 12-year-old godson in New York IMs me as he’s doing his homework and we have a short videochat about the fact that his voice is changing. An old college pal pings me and suggests that we link up on LinkedIn. The dog walker texts me to say he’ll be a few minutes late. Email and RSS feeds arrive all day with a steady drumbeat of questions, answers, assignments and funny cat videos. My cellphone rings. When the mailman knocks on the door, it takes me several seconds to recognize a sound that doesn’t have an electronic origin.
How does anyone get anything done these days???
There was a time when I could close my office door, switch off the phone and stare at an obedient but vapid computer that would respond to my every thought, observation and newsworthy press release. Now my laptop is too busy downloading Kelly Clarkson’s new CD on iTunes. She says she’ll get back to me.
So today, I will dig deep and find the courage to silence all the voices. Particularly that Facebook friend who posted my high school graduation photo. I will turn off my cellphone, power down the computer and leave the house.
But I’ll probably get lonely.
So I’ll be back in 20 minutes to check my email and start a conference call.
Buzzworthy:
“The Twouble with Twitters”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN2HAroA12w&feature=popular
Tweet Tooth:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101881984
Facebook Sing-a-long
Marsha – Agreed! If we don’t take time to rejuvenate, we don’t allow the creative ideas the space to develop. Luddites, unite!! Cheers, David
Marsha, I’d long viewed a home office as a quiet space away from the hubbub of the office… until this week. Back from the same highly taxing meetings that David Landis also attended, I was deliciously anticipating time at the house to go deep and write a piece that we had committed to.
As we say in New York, forgeddaboutit!
All the interruptions you outline. But I have one secret — my favorite coffee shop. Monkey Joe’s is a very local place in an anachronistic store on Broadway in Kingston, N.Y. — the mid Hudson Valley between Westchester and Albany. Early on I chided the Gabe and Kathy, the owners, for not having WiFi. Ahhh, now I say bless them. Amidst the background babble of customers coming and going, I am alone in the crowd, no IM, no e-mail, no Twitter.
My new place for solace is not the office, not the house, but our little coffee shop. http://www.monkeyjoe.com/coffeehouse.html