Published on 12, July, 2020
Hello,
Does anyone here really enjoy working from home and if so what do you do ?
It really hit home to me, whilst out having an early morning walk today by the river, that I would be much happier working from home. I have worked a physical job most of my life and have known a change was long overdue, for years actually. I've realised this is causing me more stress than what it's worth and I'm in the process of minimising as much stress as I can, even if it may involve a loss of income.
I've looked around at some of the most common jobs people are doing from home but don't really interest me, like corporate companies, data-entry, sales and so on. They're just not my cup of tea. I'd much more prefer to be helpful or creative or contribute something positive in some way. I'm just wondering how to go about finding work I could do from home that could be interesting or maybe even meaningful ?
Any insights would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.
I always said I'd never work from home given the option because I needed the commute to "switch off" from work. After around a year of doing it I can't imagine ever going back into the office.
I do data crunching and report writing (it's various outputs of management information and ad-hoc question answering which keeps it interesting) Frankly it can be done anywhere where there's a PC. Even though I was based in an office my actual team was scattered all over the country, so a lot of our work was done virtually anyway. With working from home I've found I don't have the background chatter behind me (I frequently wore headphones in the office to block other people out when I was working on something), I'm not experiencing the sheer discomfort of physically being around folk and doing small talk (it's amazing how much of that I don't miss) and I now have the ability to take time away from work exactly when I need it. Even if it's just 5 mins to annoy the cat, make a brew or just stand outside in the garden to get air. My away time from everyone is exactly that.
The other big difference is not having to manage the travel when I'm stressed. I've been finding things horribly difficult over the last few weeks because of an irreversible work-fudge I had to deal with. My saving grace was being able to switch everything off and crash straight onto the bed at the end of the day. The last time I had work issues and had to manage the daily commute - when I factored in the frustration of cancelled connections, noisy stations and navigating the town center with various people constantly approaching to try and get me to sign up for stuff - I felt constantly exhausted and was almost on the brink of psychological collapse.
I've no desire to return to the office anytime soon. I'm kind of adjusted with it now so I'd be resistant with going back in and would get my psychologist to weigh in to recommend to my managers I stay put.
Ethan said:Frankly it can be done anywhere where there's a PC.
That sounds like my ideal way of working, preferably with a lot of working hour flexibility and a good degree of independence. I'm not sure I'd want to work from home if it meant chained to the computer all day 9-5 though. I get it would work for those glad to be shot of the actual office. I've never experienced that so for me it would be just like taking an office job so I'm not sure what I'm looking for actually exists.
Maybe I'd need to create something myself or go self-employed in some way. I wasn't brought-up with all this technology, working remotely and so on, so when I look at job listings of working from home online, it looks like a scary world I don't understand. I don't even know what half of the job titles mean and those I've looked up are about as appealing as chewing sandpaper.
I realise the job market is huge today with a million different job titles but from what I see, the majority of them would have me stuck at a computer all day, working for employers or to deadlines and basically doing an office job for the sake of it. It's hard to know where to start to find something more than that, as at this stage, I'm not looking to jump from one hamster wheel to another. It's pretty overwhelming and daunting as I feel like I'm starting from a blank sheet of paper so late on.