Most people who read my blogs know that I work from home. If you’re not among them, well, I do. Work from home. Or work at home. Whichever the more grammatically correct phrase is. Many have commented at my “enviable” situation and I do have to admit that working from home has its perks. One, I don’t have to drive down to the city five days a weeks and deal with the insane traffic that has made Metro Manila infamous. Two, I can work in my pajamas, or even without them if I choose to. Third, as the girls were growing up, I got to send them off when they left for school each morning (most mornings, at least — there were times when I was too dead tired to get up) and I was there to welcome them home in the afternoon. More importantly, I was there to listen to their stories, to the high and low points of their day in school, to laugh with them and commiserate with them.
But working from home isn’t heaven. Far from it. It’s so much nicer than going to an office but it has its share of problems. Some readers think that I act like a spoiled brat when I complain about crappy internet connection. What they don’t realize is that unless I have a stable and reasonably fast internet connection, then, I can’t work. That’s the bottomline.
If crazy traffic, flooded streets, unreasonable bosses and even more unreasonable subordinates are problems that office folk deal with everyday, I deal with issues like server downtimes, unavailable e-mail service, copyright infringement, non-existent support for premium blog themes that didn’t come cheap at all… the list is endless. It’s just that the items on the list are very much different from issues that office people face day in and day out. And the biggest difference is that when you work alone, like I do, you deal with all the issues by yourself.
Yeah, I’m having a bad day. Although I’ve had worse days. Like that time when the server was down for several hours and my blogs went offline. In the Pinoy Cook fan page in Facebook, I posted an explanation cum apology to the 6,000+ fans although heaven knows that the server downtime wasn’t my fault. Then, someone instructed me to reboot my computer to put the blog back online. As if. I was patient and nice as I tried to explain that my computer and the server are two different things, that the server is with the webhost, not me. And she just kept repeating her instructions as though I was too stupid to understand her the first time. I’m sure that the person meant to be helpful. But still… Sigh.
Nonetheless, I still consider myself luckier than others. I made the choice to work from home and it has been a very fruitful endeavor. A wonderful learning experience, a time for discovery and self-discovery, a lesson in self-reliance… I’ve had the pleasure of calling Speedy at work in the middle of the day with conversations that often went like this:
Me: “What are you doing?”
Speedy: “Doing paperwork (or talking with a client or something)… What are you doing?”
Me: “Lying in bed, watching TV and eating popcorn… Aren’t you envious? It’s so cool and relaxing here, and it must be a hundred degrees out there…”
And he’d curse. Goodnaturedly because he’d know I was just dissing him.
Well, Speedy is semi-retired now. And he has more time than I do to watch TV and YouTube and hang out in Facebook. He can do all that while I pound away on my keyboard writing about irritating issues like the CBCP and its war against contraceptives. He can do all that while I pull my hair out over dead servers and content thieves.
Sometimes, I envy him.
I sometimes think misleadingly-labelled ‘help’ desk personnel are trained to give three bits of advice:
1. Re-boot computer
2. Uninstall software and reinstall
3. Format hard drive and start again
Point 3 is pretty much foolproof because if the customer is idiotic enough to do it, all evidence of software malfunction is expunged forever.
Call center culture.
Ah the perils and perks of working at home. Had the worst of it some two years ago when Globe simply sucked big time.
The one thing I love about working at home, is that you can take a break any time you want, and as long as you want. Unless of course you have deadlines to beat within the day!
Three deadline a week and the rest of the time to be spent as I see fit — one would think I have it all. BUT. The moment the technical stuff gets screwed up (90% of the time it’s broadband issues), beating one deadline can be a real punishment. Like Mission: Impossible.
Where is your server hosted? Have you considered hosting it in the U.S.? I remember before (when I was still working, coz now I’m a stay-at-home mom), our company used US-based server hosting. It cost only $10 per month for basic package then. If you can ask your techie friends (like Migs Paras if you know him) I’m sure they can give you some info.
The physical server is in the U.S. In Texas, to be more precise.
And I’m on a dedicated server. It’s way more expensive than shared servers (the ones that cost $10 or so are shared servers) but with the traffic of the food blog, a dedicated server is really the logical choice.
Migs was among the very first people to whom I turned for advise when shared servers couldn’t handle my bandwidth requirements anymore.
Hi Ms. Connie, I too, work from home. One of the positive aspects of working from home is I get to have more bonding time with the family.
And the work time…I take a 15 minute nap because Discovery Channel says it’s good for productivity.
Actually, I take as many 15 minute naps as I want.
Then, after a cup of coffee, it’s back to the computer and do research for my next article.
I also learned one important lesson, and that is not to lose my cool over things beyond my control.
I leave the technical side of running my site to my webhost, while I concentrate on building content.
They have excellent after sales support, by the way.
“I leave the technical side of running my site to my webhost”
It’s not that simple when you’re on a dedicated server. On a dedicated server, you see the actual movement on your sites and you watch which pages are getting spammed, which scripts are killers because they go on endless loops… And you learn how to deal with each kind of problem.
I’m not patient enough to wait for support to respond, I suppose.
I guess I don’t have your kind of problems right now as my site is relatively young. It’s a little more than a year since I started on my homepage.
This is a learning experience for me. There are so many things to learn.
They say that putting up a website is like earning a master’s degree in Business Administration.
The only difference is that in the end, they don’t hand out diplomas.
Instead of a diploma, you get a check. In US dollars.
I SUPPORT YOUR WAR AGAINST CBCP!
And I hope this time working from home would do me as much good as it did to you. 
You are an artist so I think you will love the often solitary hours spent working at home. Looking forward to new paintings!
hi Ms. Connie, i work from home too for a company based in North Carolina, US. Yes, it has highs and lows. hawak mo oras mo but pag down ang internet at may updates sa blog host masakit sa ulo especially if you are not a techie like me. working from home is very ideal for stay at home moms, earning while at home looking after the baby. what i see as a downside sa job ko is the fluctuating foreign exchange, if the peso is going strong, may baba sa pay but if the peso is weak mataas ang pay.
My present racket allows me to work at home. However, I still prefer to work in the office since malapit lang ito sa bahay. Wala pang abala.
And always on the go…anywhere, anytime, anyhow…