Where Do You Work And Why?

I was getting ready to research a great article for today that would prove to everyone concerned I was really the expert in IT issues they were looking for to handle all of their content needs and then a strange thing happened.

My neighbor started mowing the lawn. Now in itself that shouldn’t be a problem, and if I had more time away from the old ball and chain that’s my laptop and BlackBerry, I’d more than likely be out cutting my lawn and enjoying the nice hot weather up here in Toronto too.

But that’s not the way it is. I’m a content writer and that means I work from the house more often than not. More and more, however, the question is becoming where can I go    to work quietly inside the house, or, more accurately, where can I go to get the peace and quiet needed to get the job done? It’s not the spare bedroom in my house that faces the street where I’m sitting right now. I live in a subdivision and people only have the weekends to cut and manicure their lawns ( I understand that ) but sometimes, while I’m trying to put a sentence or two together, I wonder where good household maintenance ends and compulsive behavior in the form of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ starts. I mean is the electric leaf blower that makes the neighborhood sound like a runway at Pearson International Airport really necessary?

It doesn’t seem to matter where I go either—every space has its own distractions that seem like they’re trying to distract me personally unless I keep focused. I love dogs but forgot what Labrador Retriever puppies were like long enough to get another one. Anyway, the ground floor of our home has been taken over by Blue who’s just learned the art of nudging my elbow with his nose for attention from his older sister.

It all brings me to the point of this article. There’s an army of us working from home base now and taking on this work brings new challenges. So what do you do when you need a little quiet time to meet a deadline or two? Where do you go for a little isolation to get a day’s writing done? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not belly aching about the ability to stay home and make a living