I love working from home. I love not spending all that time in the car, and I like being around my kids more. It more than offsets the occasional week I might have to spend in Mexico or Africa. I can go hang out with them for five minutes as a transition, or help out if needed in a pinch. They’ve never known anything else.
But Rhys has been doing this thing lately where he goes up to me and says “I want to do your work.” Then he’ll sit on my lap and poke at the space bar or trackpad until I have to intervene and make sure he doesn’t send every coworker and client a folder of stupid selfies.
His impression is that I tap a spacebar for hours on end. He doesn’t even really understand money or know that I get paid for this. So apparently I sit at a desk and just tap a spacebar for hours just for kicks. He does a good job of not judging me for what it looks like, but it does make me think about what my life looks like from my kids’ POV.
Specifically, it makes me think about a couple parts of Brad Montague’s book: how most kids are under the impression that being grown up equates to being busy, tired, and in a hurry most of the time. I know my strategy will have to shift on an age-by-age basis, but one of my overarching goals as a parent is to avoid leaving my kids with the impression that I’m busy and tired all the time.
In the meantime, I might take my work to coffee shops a bit more often.
Tapping the Spacebar
