Seeing as how my last post was issued in July, it seems I have quite a bit of catching up to do as far as informing the adoring public as to what I've been up to.
We'll pick up where we left off last time.
July - Came and went.
August - I'm sure something fantastic and brain stretching happened in August, I just can't remember what it was. Oooh, maybe my Wedding Anniversary? Sure, why not?
September - Okay, this was a big one. See, sometime in August I asked my Boss if it would be okay to let me try working from home a few days a week to help myself and him get a feel for how it would be if I was to start working from home for the company full-time. (Not Freelance) I had done loads of research on the subject and printed them out for him to read along with a brief proposal. A few weeks went by with no response and finally one came. It wasn't a no, but it certainly wasn't a yes, yet.
What transformed it into a definite yes was nothing short of a motorcycle crash. No not literally. To make it literally a motorcycle crash I'd had to have been on a motorcycle, but I was on a scooter and if I was to only walk away from that experience with one new nugget of knowledge it would be that hitting the pavement at 35mph and surfing it for 30feet into a curb, you realize that the asphalt, gravity and it's buddy inertia really don't give a shit what sort of vehicle your body fell off of. It had your ass and it was going to do to you whatever it wanted to. It chose to slide me into the curb on Valley Road in West Orange, NJ. It didn't even care that it placed my bike in a no parking section after the crash and kids, when I opened my eyes after I realized I stopped moving the face of my helmet was pushed right up against the curb and even had the yellow "no parking" paint scraped right across it. I only broke my pinky and my favorite expensive windbreaker (only cost me $45 but retailed for $300+) somehow didn't get a damned scratch on it.
The night before (Sept 1st,) I had sent my boss a reply to his "not no, not yes" reply to my initial proposal. So, he received that email and the very next contact he gets from me is me telling him I'm in an ambulance being taken to an emergency room. I sat in the ER for 12 hours before my surgery and 16 hours after I left my house I was finally back home. I just realized the tone this posting has taken and I'll have none of that.
Fast-forward to today, but not just yet. Sept 1st was the last full-day I've worked in the office. A week later I went in and he OK'd the trial, but it was 5 days a week. Better than I expected. My hand was in a full cast for two weeks, and then a half cast for four weeks after that. Sometime before Christmas I was deemed full recovery by my physical therapist. My Boss has never asked me "when I'm coming back" and I think my work somehow has vastly improved. I don't know if it can be attributed to the non-45minute commute, the non-constant distractions of the average workplace or perhaps it's just the regular course of my professional development but I know I'm definitely working harder. It's not about work output, for me it's about the quality of that work and of proving to them that I'm actually working. My eyes are constantly glued to the screen in the event they email or IM me. I do not want to let them down or ever make them think I'm not working when I should be. I've become addicted to accountability.
I think one of my coworkers even IM's me in an attempt to try and catch me off guard. Which adds to the stress of constantly being on lookout. My gateway to the company is using Microsofts Remote Desktop Connection, which means my entire office work screen is windowed with no sound. So I try to maximize the window and resize all my other App screens to be just above the taskbar of my office connection window. Sometimes I forget to resize the apps and if I'm lost/zoned-out working in Photoshop/Indesign/Illustrator I sometimes lose track of time and might be 10-15min late on a notification. That stuff freaks me out even though morally it shouldn't because I know what I've been doing, but again, they don't so if I'm ever questioned it's going to be impossible not to sound over defensive. So all I really can do is to make my work speak for itself.
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