What is it about working in an office that makes you soooo sleeeeepy ’round abouts 3 or 4 pm? This never happens to me when I’m working from home. I never take naps; instead, I feel like I’m constantly busy reading and writing and checking emails and, maybe, getting up to wash dishes or make my bed or fix something to eat.
Of course, if I had to, I could nap—and maybe that’s exactly why I don’t need to.
I have a strange confession. One of my favorite parts of going into the office these past three freelance weeks has been my my commute. In particular, taking the bus up 1st Avenue to the UN, and then walking to 3rd from there, often stopping on the way for an iced coffee from the Amish establishment that is not Amish at all (it’s run by Turks, fyi, but “Amish sounded better,” according to a certain cab driver. How’s that for branding?).
Some of you may have read Adam Gopnik’s piece on riding the bus, how he adopted it after ignoring it for years in favor of the subway and, in fact, finds it a highly soothing pursuit for a variety of reasons. (If you haven’t, read it, it’s good stuff.)
For an unemployed person, I sure have a lot of work to do all of a sudden. What happened? It’s a gorgeous sunny Sunday and I’m inside copy editing and editing and doing a mishmash of freelance work that I didn’t have time to do during the day because I was busy-little-beeing at my 3-week assignment in midtown.
This is not a complaint, but rather, a reflection of the comfort, even joy, I feel that despite all the gloom and doom, there is freelance work out there! Hoorah! Maybe not so much as there was back in the glory days of 2005, but there are still bits and pieces to be had, and not always of the badly paying, tedious, and soul-sucking variety.
