Poof

People have noticed this blog has gone quiet.  I wrote the following post almost a year ago but never got around to hitting publish.  Waiting on the polish to a couple of the paragraphs that just never came.  Well I pulled out my buffing cloth tonight and got it done.  A year ago I wrote:

Life has changed again.  Three years ago I was a happy telecommuter.  Waking up each morning and by way of the coffee pot, heading to my desk to work a full day plus.  Five days a week this was my schedule.  I was a super dedicated employee putting in extra hours and loving my job. One management change later (along with some details that make an amusing story now) and the pendulum swung all the way the other direction.  I was a burned out public employee, sitting in an office cubical ninety miles away from my home and family five days a week and living in a van.

The thing about public employment is it strongly favors hanging in there when big change happens.  Because change, has an incredibly hard time sticking in the land of we-bees.  New management can come in with big ideas but in an institution as old as our country, it is the people in the trenches that understand what needs to be done and how to get it there.  That’s where the expression comes from.  The we-bees.  “We be here when you got here, we be here when you leave.  It is the we-bees that make government work.” That’s my story.  A few months ago there was some rumbling about a hiring binge and running out of space in our building.  I sent the division director my idea for a brilliant solution (let us work from home!) but was firmly slapped down.  Time went by and harsh reality set in to the tie wearing crowd.   Suddenly, the division director had a brand new idea.

I still have to be in the office two days a week, maybe moving to one day before the snow flies again.  The week long van-life phase of my existence is over.  I have been here before, back twenty years ago when I first started working from home.  The amount being done while at the office becomes less and less until it is a hang around socializing day until bosses figure out time is being wasted.  Then maybe our new policy will lighten up even more.

My first work at home… I will be quite honest with you was actually kind of rough. 

It is crazy, how I have lived here in my big city three years.  I have made a life for myself over here.  It wasn’t so much out of desire for all of these activities but more a matter of just filling the empty space.  I am a great filler of empty space.  So now, I find myself in some ways missing all of this stuff.

That doesn’t even begin to address The Wife at home who has lived as a single mom.  Hating it, and yet she has done the same thing.  Building a routine and now finding out a major disruption to that routine is coming back home.  So we are now working these details and compromises out.  Bringing our lives back together. 

I call this "Parking - Level Master"

Today is the first day of week three of my telecommuting again and through lots of communication we have figured out how to make this all work.  It has been great not having to deal with the every day stress of living away. 

I have to believe, I owe my sanity, continued employment, and happy marriage to a white van.  I could have never done it otherwise.  It was never perfect, but I have had a home away from home.  I place an introvert can recharge.  A cheap place to live in a land of thousand dollar apartments.  Our credo of “making it work” allowed me to keep working, keep the family insured, living and having a place to call home.

The freedom of van life will be impressed upon me for the rest of my days.  The ability to open my front door and find myself exactly where I wanted to be has been amazing.  A park, a coffeeshop, a bakery, anyplace an invisible white service van could park was my home for the night.  Maybe someday I will live again as a nomad.  Or, maybe I never will.  But for two years and one month I have been able to live this life, and all things considered… it wasn’t bad.