‘ As I stepped outside today to fetch the mail – no shoes, no shirt, Stella slippin’ out the door just as it opened – I thought for a moment about the lifestyle working from a home office has allowed me to lead.
I walked to the curb in the summer heat and browsed through the mail; no checks, no bills – a wash for any entrepreneur. The sun was warming my back, cooled all morning by the largesse of the AC in my home office. It felt damn good.
I paused. This is one heluva life we’ve carved out here – myself and 20 million other American home-based entrepreneurs. It’s 95% a lifestyle play, 5% because I’m a cheap S.O.B. who wouldn’t want to absorb the overhead of moving my home-based enterprise into some corporate digs.
And why should I anyway? What can I accomplish in a corporate trap that I cannot do in my home office? Read More »
I recently received a demo of the Motormouse. The pint-sized Porsche car is a 2.5 GHz wireless mouse that uses a simple USB input to rev up navigation. The utility of this gadget got me thinking about that place where fun and functionality converge in the home office.
To hear the IRS tell it, the tax-deductible home office must be a place of business. It has to be used “regularly and exclusively” for business purposes, and cannot double as a playroom, guestroom or music studio after hours (unless, of course, your business is music). Does that mean your PC or Mac cannot store a music library or play iTunes? Or you cannot practice music over lunch (if your business is NOT music)?
Lines definitely are blurred.
Tell that to the people at Motormouse. More than some kitschy toy, the Motormouse ($49.95; http://www.motormouse.us.com) fits neatly beneath one’s palm, making it responsive to use. It’s “superbly crafted” (it says so in the press materials) and is available in black, red or silver. The tires are rubber; the scroll wheel is the spare. The trunk even opens to stash two AAA batteries and the USB receiver.
The media kit also says it’s perfect for the décor of almost any car enthusiast or gadget lover. Or home officer?
Truth be told, I use a Wave keyboard with an integrated touch-pad pointing device (a.k.a. mouse). So the Motormouse’s functionality in my home office was rather limited. My son surfs like any teenager. That, coupled with his penchant for Porsches, has made the Motormouse a fixture in his bedroom.
But the question of the gadget in the home office helps define – and blur – the space.
As a work-at-home dad, I once was innocently tagged by my daughter as that dad who “works in his underwear.” Such is my home office lament.
So imagine the surprise when this mom read the subtext of what her child drew about what Mommy does for a living…
Suffice it to say, Mommy felt the need to clear the air…
Dear Mrs. Jones,
I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer. I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn’t show me dancing around a pole. It’s supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.
From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.
Sincerely, Mrs. Smith
Now, I’ve become quite suspicious of stuff being passed as “truth” on the Internet. But fact or fiction, this is plain funny.
Millions of American men are joining the ranks of the work-at-home dad — if only temporarily.
One of those was Josh Lubin, a Web advertising executive in Atlanta. After the birth of his child, Josh spent some time at home on paternity leave. Read about his experiences below or by clicking here….
ATLANTA, Georgia — Going back to work after my wife had our first child was an emotional roller coaster.
The author says that being “Mr. Mom” is appealing, but putting the idea into practice is harder than it looks. Read More »
* Dads don’t earn as much overtime as moms for their stay-at-home jobs.
* The typical working dad earned no overtime in his 39.6-hour dad’s work week, while working moms earned, on average, 27% of their “mom salary” in overtime.
* Although their hours differed, all parents had eight jobs in common: Day Care Center Teacher, Laundry Machine Operator, Computer Operator, CEO, Facilities Manager, Psychologist, Van Driver, and Cook.
* Dads had two jobs in their top 10 which moms did not have: General Maintenance Worker and Groundskeeper.
* Moms had two unique counterpart jobs: Janitor and Housekeeper.
* By working long hours in a high-wage area, stay-at-home dads near Silicon Valley in California, clocked in at an annual value greater than $149,000.
* Working fewer “dad hours” in a low wage area, working dads on the rural Texas-New Mexico border rated about $83,500 in dad pay.
Kelly Lieberman is a serial entrepreneur, domain strategist, devoted mom. And she remembers vividly the day her daughter, Lily, “outed” her as a work-at-home parent
Lily was in first grade. She was asked to draw a picture of what her parents did for a living, and what she would like to do when she grew up.
During the parent-teacher conference, Kelly and husband Joe say pictures of Joe in a suit at his desk with a computer, Lily as a princess, and Kelly in a night gown with a laptop on a bed.
“I was mortified,” Kelly recalls. “Thank goodness everyone knew me.” Read More »
MyDaddyWorksInHisUnderwear.com is for dads who work from home.
Teleworkers or 1099ers. Corporate citizens and entrepreneurs. If you work from home — even occasionally — then this site’s for you.
And the people who love (or tolerate) you. Or appreciate the commitment you’ve made and the challenges you face. Or the fun you have — even sometimes at your own expense.
Working in your underwear is not mandatory (fully clothed is acceptable, as is commando). But it’s about a mindset, a perspective that says, “I work where my life is.”
And my life includes three kids, a wife, a dog, a hamster — and all the trappings that come in tow.
Coming soon will be a collection of stories from dads who work from home and the decisions that drove them there. Check back. Often. It should be a hoot for dads, moms, guys, gals and anyone who digs the workspace called home.
So I got an invitation to become friends or some such with a happy lass on FaceBook. Never saw her before, but because she posted her picture (with a Miller Lite in hand, no less), and she’s a Gator, and she looked like someone I might have wanted to party with (20 ago before I met my wife and the mother of my three kids), I declined the invite and short-circuited any potential temptation….
But “Kristen” also had a widget, or sidebar, or some such (whatever they call them over at FaceBook) on her site called “Smart People Humor.”
Minimum-mandatory notwithstanding, I clicked on the link.
It featured a book, In the Event of my Untimely Demise, from some guy named Brian Sack, someone I’d never heard of, but whom I discovered in short order that he was someone I’d wanted to learn more about. Apparently my home office IS a cave from which I don’t emerge often, as this guy gets more airtime than a Polymagist caught in a doctor-shopping Oxycontin scheme on a slow news week when Fox, CNN, MSNBC and KCCI in Des Moines are scrambling for a lead story.
Or when Paris comes out in a video with her own energy plan.
In one video clip, Sack was a guest on The Glenn Beck Show on Headline News, with his son, Antek (It’s Polish, Sack has to explain it every time. Tell me about it. Zbar’s Polish, too…), shilling his book. In another, he’s hyping perfect holiday gifts, including a pint-sized plastic baby with a cigarette in its mouth that when lit, burns like incense.
But I digress.
After arriving in my home office at 730am, I found myself almost two hours later having explored the Web, watched 20 minutes of Brian Sack videos, and realizing that I needed his book (the subhead read, “20 Things My Son Needs to Know”). Creator of the site Banterist.com, Sack is a funny guy. And he’s a dad. And I ordered his book. I’ll write back when I’ve read the back cover.
