What's Going On

So, I mentioned in my last post that a bunch of stuff was going on that was taking up my time and energy, and that I’d get into it later. It’s now “later”.

First and foremost, there are some big changes coming down the pike at work for me. The big deal is that starting in a couple weeks I’m going to be working from home on most days. The reason for this is that the office is moving into the owner’s home.

The home office is separate from the rest of the house, but it is still a part of it, and that raises a number of concerns. First of all, we work different schedules, I generally work from 9am to 6pm or so (with an hour for lunch, give or take), while my boss usually works from 7am to 4pm, if not earlier. It’s not a problem now, but he really doesn’t want me hanging out in his house fro two hours after he’s done for the day. That’s perfectly understandable. In addition, the office will be smaller than the current location, and would be a little tight with both of us in there trying to work at the same time. Also, I bring Markus (my miniature dachshund) to work with me, but I couldn’t bring him there due largely to worries about their cat (she not only hates dogs but is terrified of them).

That’s all fine by me, I’ve often thought that working from home would be a great, assuming I can actually get some work done. I’ll have to set up and maintain a routine in order to remain productive, but I can work on that. I’ll still be going in once a week, most likely, to keep files up to date, review and new and current work, etc., of course.

The second big change isn’t as nice of one: I’m going to move to working four days a week on average instead of five. There are a number of reasons for this, and none of them bad, it’s just the way things are shaping up. There isn’t quite enough drafting to keep me going full time, and if I’m not in the office every day that limits the amount of other stuff I can do. The last few months my boss has been working hard to keep me busy, and he just can’t do it any more, so I agreed to work one day less a week in order to keep this job.

Why am I willing to take a pay cut to keep a job? Just listen to this: At my bosses insistence, I am going to be paid travel time to come into the office whenever I do, I’m going to be getting a raise when all of this happens, and he’s going to be helping me pay for a nice new computer to have at home to do work on (helping because it’s going to be my computer, not his, I’ll just be using it part of the time for work). He recognizes that working less is going to be a bit of a burden and is trying to make it more worth my while. Add to that the fact that he’s always been more than fair in our dealings and the great amount of respect I have for him, and this is a job I want to hold onto for as long as it works for me.

Besides, I’ve always thought that a four day work week is just right.

So at the moment setting up our second bedroom as a home office, researching computers and the other things I’ll need, and reworking budgets and the like is taking up much of my free time. Once this all goes down, though, I’ll have a bunch of free time that I didn’t have before, so here’s hoping.