My Daddy Works in His Underwear

‘ 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?
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Those who follow my Tweets on Twitter might have noticed an increasing sense of cycicism and sarcasm of late. Let’s not mince words here. It’s rage. Raw, freakin’ rage.

Today’s tweet: Memo from Main Street: BOLO for Wall Street’s honor. Feds slept as banks ran amok, debt grew, jobs wilted. CEOs bonused millions. Now what?

Seriously. Now What?! Bankers and international money managers (launderers?) bought enough sub-prime mortgages to wallpaper a thousand tracks of once-overpriced-now-foreclosed McMansions in the burbs. CEOs lied about their bottom lines, keeping federal regulators in the dark (though they were complicit in the process anyway, acting as if all was honky-dory in their scotch-n-Valium-induced stupor as a small fire sparked in a corner closet somewhere in Rome).

Today, Rome is a flash fire ready to explode. And Lehman CEO Richard Fuld pocketed $22 million in bonuses in March. Yeah, “You’re doing a heckuva job here, Fuldie…”

What does that have to do with entrepreneurship, the home office or us out here on Main Street? Everything.
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I just entered a contest for Freelance Folder (don’t try; entry’s closed). Celebrating their first birthday, founder Jon asked people for their best tips on running a freelance biz, home office / home-based or otherwise. Click here to see my response.

But there was more going on in my reply (”Persist“) than a one-word, catch-all missive that could be boiled down to some Motivational Speaker’s over-priced, self-obsessed rant.

I got to talking about birthdays and gifts and 19.5 years in freelancing and the classic line from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon: “Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death…”

And I got to thinking about my place in this place. Nineteen years as a soloist. NINETEEN FRICKIN’ YEARS! All but two of my professional years have been spent in a home office. Robbie and I have a 16 year old high school junior, plus a 14- and a 10-year-old for good measure, all of whom have come home from the hospital to a home with an office in it.

Damn, am I that old?
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News this week that George Carlin passed away suddenly — just weeks after being awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor — can only make this home officer and career writer consider some humorous scenes from his own life.

I’ve blogged about crazy dogs and screaming kids and unforgiving clients who just don’t get home officing. And I’ve never apologized for, to or about any of the lot. If George Carlin’s life was anything, it was unapologetic. If any home officer’s life should be anything in comparison, it should be full and rich and similarly unapologetic.

On my own deathbed I will not lament commutes undriven or neckties untied or vengeful co-workers or spiteful bosses left uncursed.

I will remember kids who came home to dad typing away on his computer or barking out to Keep It Down! as I was on a conference call or otherwise working from this place called home. I also will remember playing hard on Any Given Midday, and working like a whirling dervish before sunrise to meet a deadline.

Twain and Carlin were master wordsmiths and unparalleled cynics. Carlin perhaps was best known for his infamous and Supreme Court-worthy “Seven words you can’t say on television” routine. Such thought-provoking humor earned him that nod from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The award was to be given in November. His name still will join that of such notables as Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin and Neil Simon.

He was a Grammy-winning stand-up comedian, writer and actor who enjoyed a 50-year career with 22 solo albums, three best-selling books, a host of variety of TV shows and movie roles. I blogged about him in reference to those Seven Words. - and even a few of my own. Lest one question his importance and relevance in American popular culture, George Carlin was the first host of NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Yes, he enjoyed a tremendous career.

Strike that. WE enjoyed his career. Said Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen Schwarzman: Carlin makes people laugh, but also makes them think. Said Carlin to the AP on his impact on U.S. indecency jurisprudence earlier this year: “So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of.”

One more quote to consider, from Mark Twain himself: “Be good & you will be lonesome.” Methinks not, Mr. Twain. George Carlin was as good — and revered, and yes, probably loathed by some — as they come.

And at least today, he will be remembered as a pioneering comic spirit — no less than Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor or Twain himself — and a damn funny man.