Working from Home

I'm working from home today, and will be, on Mondays and Fridays, for the summer. The reason is to let me retrieve my daughter from the summer program at a relatively early hour, like 4:30, without having to cut out from work way early to do so. This way, I start my work day about half an hour earlier, and end it about ten minutes later. That is the rational brain reason. Underlying it is the emotional brain reason, which says that I want to work from home because it saves me an hour of commute time,plus the associated gas. It also isolates me from the noise at my office. Truthfully, the noise isn't that bad, but sometimes, it is. I don't care for people goofing around a lot. A little, sure. A lot, no.

I feel guilty about working from home, though. Feels like I'm cheating. When I'm at the office, that same background noise that can be irritating is also a hum that says yes, you're doing the grown-up thing, you're At The Office. When I work from home, it's not there. I do about 90% of the same stuff no matter where I am. Most of that remaining ten percent is paper-oriented stuff that can only be done there, and the rest is walk-up stuff where the person decides to wait until they see me again. Delaying the first a day or so is not a problem, but I don't like the idea of delaying the second. Part of that is that I don't think it's professional of me to make people wait (okay, they could IM me, and some do, but some don't), and part is that people tend to draw quick assumptions that you're somewhere slacking off -- and as I've said, I tend to feel that way, too. It leads me to question my own professionalism.

I think I need more to do.