Going to Work

I spent two days at the office last week. Most of the time I work from home, of course, but part of the agreement that allows me to do so calls for me to actually make an appearance two days out of each month for our catalog deadline. For the most part, I really dig the arrangement. I absolutely love working from home, and only doing it two days per month certainly makes going into the office more palatable. Everyone seems so happy to see me when I'm around, and it's fun to catch up with all my pals.

There's at least one thing I definitely don't miss about going into the office, though. When I was there last week, it seemed like everyone was coughing, sniffling, sneezing, etc. Now, I don't get sick all that often even when I am around people, but in the time since I started working at home (last July), I don't think I've been sick at all. If I have, I can't remember. So I'm definitely glad that I'm not exposed to illness now that I'm rarely around people.

Our deadline was on Tuesday of last week, meaning I spent Monday and Tuesday in the office. I always end up working an hour or two of overtime during those two days, but that's generally it for the week. Post-deadline is generally a pretty slow time for me, but last week I finished up with close to 50 total hours. Through two days this week I've already accumulated 21.5 hours, and I'm planning on working well over eight hours each day for the rest of the week, and I may put in some hours on Saturday as well. Why, you ask? Due to circumstances beyond our control, our company finds itself in a situation whereby a significant number of the product descriptions in our database need to be completely rewritten. There are very few people currently employed by our company (about 3 out of 300) who have the skills necessary for that sort of work, and I happen to be one of them. My boss told me to put in as many hours as I want toward the completion of this project, and the extra money always comes in handy, so I've jumped in with both feet.

Of course, there's a certain amount of pride at work as well. I'm a better writer than either of the other two who have been authorized to work on these descriptions (in my own ever-so-humble opinion), so I want to write as many of them as possible. For the good of the company, of course.

Although I'm certain that most people at the company would prefer this project had never come up at all, for me, it comes at the perfect time. For some reason, copywriting assignments have been few and far between lately, and I feel better now that I have a new, at least slightly creative outlet in my work. Otherwise, my job has been feeling pretty stale lately. I've been with the company for over three and a half years now, and proofreading the same product descriptions over and over again month after month gets pretty old. I'm glad to have a break in the monotony, even if it's only temporary. I can't afford for a whole lot of job dissatisfaction to arise in my mind, because I have absolutely no interest in looking to move on. I can only imagine how hard it would be to find another job where I a) like what I do (aside from the occasional patches of boredom, of course), and b) get to work at home. I'm fully aware that I've got a pretty sweet gig, and it'll take a lot before I even start to consider giving it up.