I've had a remote work position for the last year and a half. I had never planned on working from home, but the position seemed to make sense for me career wise and happened to be in another state. Rather than uproot my entire family to take the position, working remotely allowed me to take the position and keep my family where they were. I think sometimes people confuse what it is I do, with some flexible working arrangement because I work from my house. However, I have a full time job, with big (sometimes) responsibilities, and a lot of work to do each and every day. The misunderstanding is more my issue than anyone else's though, so I'll leave that alone. I travel to my company's headquarters roughly one week a month, and those trips help me to feel more connected to the people I talk to on the phone when I'm home. They also remind me that working from my home is both good and bad. It took me several months to adjust to the routine of working from home, I think I went through stages of acceptance in order to come to the steady state I enjoy today.
Stage One: Oh This is Awesome
Duration: 1 week
At first I had many thoughts about working from home: I have no commute, I don't have to get dressed up, I can work in my sweaty running clothes if I want to, life is wonderful.
Stage Two: This Sucks
Duration: 3 months
After a short honeymoon period, the reality of what it meant to commute 10 feet from my kitchen into our home office started to set in. My main contact with people I wasn't related to started to be over the phone. I had lost the daily office niceties of passing colleagues in the hall, and eating lunch with other people. Gone were beer Fridays, corporate meetings I attended in person, and random quarterly celebrations with free food. Gone was not having to set up meetings with your closest colleagues because you sat across from each other and could have quick brainstorming sessions using the white board in your cubicle. Gone was wasting time rehashing random things that happened over the weekend or who you liked best on The Voice. Gone was the social life that surrounds working in an office. During this stage I often fantasized about how long I would have to keep this job so it didn't look like I was jumping before giving it a chance. I didn't know people at the corporate headquarters well enough to actually feel like I was in the loop with what was happening when I wasn't physically there.
Stage Three: This is okay
Duration: 3 months
After deciding that I hated working from home, but also deciding that I wanted to put more effort into being successful in my job I mostly made peace with the situation. I went through a phase of putting effort into dressing up each day, even if I was just going to sit in my home office all day. It made me feel more like I was at work, and that was something that helped to give my days more structure. I also started to have an understanding of what it was I was going to do in my job - this more than anything else likely saved my ability to work from home. My position had been more or less created for me, but it wasn't firmly bounded. I had to do a lot of searching to figure out where I could add the most value, and then poke that understanding with how others viewed my role. There was a good deal of trial and error - still is, but eventually I found my way.
Stage Four: I would hate working in an office again
Duration: 1 year and going
After making peace with remote working, I found that I loved it. Well I loved it until summer came and my oldest child who is too old for daycare started being home with me, but that is another story. I stopped dressing like I was going into an office - though to be fair at best from home I dressed as though it was always casual Friday. I save my former work outfits for when I travel to the company headquarters. The bad part about this is that my former heel loving self is now very fond of flip flops and casual boots. I find that my feet don't love to wear heels when I travel now because I'm not used to wearing them - unless you count my wedge Teva flip flops (they don't count). I've also found ways to be as productive as possible from home, and thankfully from places that have free wifi when I just need a change of scenery. I've found that my favorite way to make phone calls is with the simple headphones and in-line microphone on my iPhone ear buds attached to my work iPhone. I learned that I needed to turn off the audible alert for new email messages on that phone because those alerts were audible to the rest of the people on my many calls too. I also learned how to walk away from the home office at 5 pm, which is actually pretty easy since my Eastern time zone coworkers are all long done with working by then. There are still days where I wish I had the distraction of a coworker downstairs to complain about something to, but then I call one of my colleagues and can do the same thing.
When I think about the next step in my career path, I think it is highly likely that it will be another remote working opportunity. I want to take on a greater degree of responsibility in my chosen field, and it is highly unlikely that I will find something in my current metro area. I'm glad I have made peace with working from home, even if sometimes I do still miss the comfort of office life. I think for me going to an office was a false veil of productivity - where from home you really have yourself and the work with no easy distractions at every corner. That was painful at first, but now it is freeing and a little painful if I'm completely honest.
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