A Door of My Own

I have a door in the office where we're staying in Minnesota. A real door. A door without glass, that closes and everything. I had no idea what a big difference that would make.

See, back in Portland I have a nice home office....with two huge divided light French doors. It's a bit like a fish bowl, surrounded by glass and right in the middle of everything, which makes it relatively impossible to work when a certain 3-year-old puts his little nose up to the glass and says "Mommmmmmy, play soccer with me." Or a certain 30-something-year-old says "can you do this little thing real quick." It means I work in fits and starts. Never quite getting an undivided chunk of time. In some ways it is wonderful. I definitely don't miss anything going on in the house. But it is definitely not an ideal situation for actually getting work done.

In Minnesota (where we're staying for a month) I've set up my temporary office on the second floor in an area that is small, bright, and best of all...has a door that closes. In Portland it is a huge struggle to balance home/home life and business/home life. I feel like I'm always working but also never working efficiently. That's part of the trick with having a home office, right? And I know it can be frustrating for Brian, too, since I'm always so anxious to shoo them out of the house so I can get things done.

I'm pretty thrilled that something as small as a door that closes might be representative of the door between work and home. Creating that division more strongly may allow me to not only work more efficiently, but also to leave work at the "office" at the end of the day. Who knows, maybe I'll even get my evenings back again? What a wonderful next goal to work toward.