Up your career

As a busy work-at-home parent, I enjoy reading the "careers" section of newspapers and fondly remembering the days back when I had one.

We who work alone often feel out of touch with the modern corporate scene, and it's always a comfort to read an attitude survey or a trends article and learn that not much has changed out there. Workers still hate their bosses. Everyone is underpaid and underappreciated. Office romances continue (though I gather they're mostly done these days by e-mail). And goldbricks are more creative than their peers.

Here are some news factoids gleaned from recent articles about the workplace, and how they apply differently to those of us on the home front:

--Only half of American workers are satisfied with their jobs, and more are unhappy with their bosses and working conditions than they were five years earlier, according to a survey of 5,000 households by The Conference Board's Consumer Research Center.

The numbers are slightly different for those who work at home: each of us is dissatisfied half of the time. Fifty percent of the time, we're giddy at the notion that our bosses are far away, and can't see us working in our bathrobes. The other half, we're surrounded by barking children and screaming dogs. Periods of dissatisfaction tend to clump around paydays.
Homebodies hate our bosses, too. The self-employed are into self-loathing.

--Baby boomers are the most dissatisfied.

Surprise! We boomers always have been a surly lot, haven't we?

--"It may be that the fast-paced, 24/7 working climate is triggering more workplace malaise than we've imagined," said Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research Center.

You said it, bubba.

--Getting the best numbers in the worker survey were respondents' colleagues, with 59 percent reporting they were satisfied with their co-workers.

But, see, we who work at home don't have any colleagues, or at best we rarely see them. My main co-worker is a dog. I'm satisfied with him, I guess. Most of the time.


--Nearly 24 million people are regularly employed telecommuters, according to the International Telework Association & Council.

That's why I keep seeing other people in the neighborhood out and about in their bathrobes.


--About 73 percent of American workers aspire to work at home, says a report by consulting firm International Data Corp.

Pretty soon, everyone will be working out of their homes, all strung together by fiber optic networks. Memo to self: Invest in bathrobe stock.

--Some business pundits predict the work-at-home phenomenon will stall as the economy slows. Bosses will want to keep a closer eye on employees, and will be more likely to scale back workforces.

Yikes. Here comes trouble.

--A survey by Nielsen/NetRatings finds that 46 percent of online holiday shopping was done at the office.

Now here's an example of worker creativity. Back when I toiled in a regular office, we had to sneak out to do any Christmas shopping during the weekday. Now, people do it right from their desks, when they're not busy playing Free Cell or forwarding jokes by e-mail.

--Even during the rest of the year, workers do 40 percent of their online shopping on the job, according to Vault.com, a job search and research Website.

I've tried to avoid online shopping, mostly because I figured it would eat up all my work time. Solo workers have to think about such things, and practice some discipline. It's not like the boss will stop by and interrupt your shopping. Try to take a quick peek at E-Bay, and, whoops, your work day is gone.

--Vault.com says workers spend 23 hours online per month at work and only 10 hours online per month at home.

Naturally, since us work-at-home folks tend to do all of our online stuff on the same computer, one would combine the two figures and come up with, er, 187 hours per month. Wait a minute . . .


--Many companies haven't established firm policies about telecommuting and on-the-job Net surfing.

Shh. If we keep this quiet, maybe more of us can sneak home and set up our offices there, before the personnel types set restrictive policies. Eventually, the majority of us can work where no one looks over our shoulders.

Workers of the world: go home.

Actively insane

If you're one of those working parents who thrives on pressure, if you just don't have enough stress in your life, then I'd suggest you run right out and enroll your children in some extracurricular activities.

Scouts and sports, science fairs and spelling bees, music lessons and dance lessons and children's theater all can broaden your children's horizons, give them life skills and refine their special talents. And these events can turn you, the parent, into a gibbering idiot.

Careful analysis finds that the strain of extracurricular activities can be divided into three major categories: transportation, practice and stage fright.

TRANSPORTATION

Once your children become involved in after-school activities, you'll soon recognize the origins of the phrase "drive me crazy." The parents' main role in these activities is to chauffeur the little hellions, er, geniuses, from one rehearsal/soccer game/club meeting to another until we see city streets in our sleep.

No matter where you live, these events will take place halfway across town. This is so you can't actually go home and get anything done while the kids are attending their activities. You might have enough time to run a quick errand or grab a cup of coffee nearby, but you'd better be back to retrieve your kids at the precise time the activity ends. Otherwise, you'll hear about it, believe you me.

If you have more than one child, you can count on their activities starting at the same time, miles away from each other. This is why you see so many hysterical "soccer moms" roaring wild-eyed through traffic in their minivans. The kids are in the back seat, repeating in a singsong manner, "We're gonna be laa-a-ate."

Most activities require special gear -- toe shoes, scripts, sneakers, Scout uniforms. The Murphy's Law of extracurricular activities is that these items will be "lost" every time your children need them, a condition that won't be discovered until you're halfway there. Your best bet is to keep everything in your vehicle at all times. Sure, your car may look and smell like a gym locker, but at least the search will be localized.

PRACTICE

Everyone knows that old joke: "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? By refusing to practice until your parents go insane."

Yes, practice goes against the grain of most children, who saunter around with the innate assurance that they can ace that spelling bee/recital/playoff game without any preparation.

Trying to get kids to practice regularly is a major source of ulcers and baldness in parents. You can nag. You can stand over them. You can recite their lines along with them until you know their parts better than they do. You can pull out all your hair and scream and double over and grasp your abdomen. None of it will do any good.

And if you do succeed in getting them to practice, say, the saxophone, then you'll be trapped in the house with them while they squawk and honk like scalded geese.

The solution? Make them practice in the car. All their stuff's out there anyway.

STAGE FRIGHT

No matter how well you drill your children, when it comes time to actually perform, expect opening-night jitters. Nervous pacing, rumbling guts, nail-biting, uncontrollable twitching. All on the part of the parents. The kids will be fine, either too confident or too obtuse to recognize the opportunity for humiliation that lies ahead.

Both of my sons have participated in spelling bees lately. One is active in Cub Scouts. The other was in a play (Shakespeare, no less). At these events, the parents were much more anxious than their children. They mouthed lines along with their kids and muttered curses and recrossed their legs repeatedly, as if they needed to go to the bathroom.

The kids' main reaction? Yawning. Right up there on stage. My wife says this is a nervous reaction, caused by the child's need for extra oxygen. I think it's because they were up too late the night before, cramming with their parents.

Parents can be forgiven all their symptoms of stress. They want their children to perform well, to not be embarrassed. They want home-video moments of successful recitals and sports championships.

But mostly they want to make all that driving pay off.

Storm report

We've gotten hammered here in Northern California by a powerful Pacific storm -- heavy rains, 70 mph wind gusts, etc. -- but the only damage at my house was one uprooted palm tree that looks like a goner and a board fence flapping like a gossip's tongue. The wind blew so hard that it blew over my propane barbecue grill, which weighs nearly a hundred pounds. Sheesh.

As I write this, we're in a lull. But they're saying snow may hit the foothills tonight or tomorrow. Most of the time, the weather here in Redding falls into two categories -- hot or wet. Apparently, once every five years or so, we get all our bad weather at once.

Back to hunkering in the bunker,

Steve

Feng shui and youi

Proper arrangement of the home office can be critical to productivity, so many people who work at home turn to the ancient art of feng shui.

Feng shui (pronounced "fung shway," from the Chinese for "I tripped over my wastebasket") is based on the notion that proper arrangement of furniture, mirrors, fountains and other geegaws for sale at exorbitant prices can channel the life force, or "chi," that flows through us and our homes.

According to feng shui principles, improper arrangement can stifle creativity, impede productivity, dampen your chances of success and generally make you feel like a heel by surrounding you with negative energy. Good placement of furnishings can attract success to you, place your work life in its proper context and give you long, lustrous hair.

So, right away, even the uninitiated can see that feng shui offers unlimited potential for ripping off gullible consumers such as yourself by providing a pseudo-religious solution to your messy office. This principle is known as "hoo-ey."

Not all feng shui practitioners are full of "hoo-ey." Many are dedicated to improving the lives of others at a lucrative hourly rate. A feng shui consultant typically will examine your workspace and make suggestions for removing clutter and placing particular objects in ways that will bring the most cosmic benefit. By hiring a consultant and carefully following the recommendations, you can improve your own well-being while also contributing to the growing New Age economy, known as "ka-chiing."

Of course, not all of us have "moo-lah" lying around to invest in feng shui consultants. For those at-home workers on a budget, we recommend the following do-it-yourself approach:

--Clutter is the enemy of the smooth flow of "chi." Allowing clutter to proliferate in your office can result in confusion and misplaced invoices and poor self-esteem, a condition known as "moo goo gai pan." Your first step toward a balanced life should be to throw out all the papers that clutter your filing cabinets and to get rid of any toys, sports equipment, nail clippers, dishes and dirty socks that have found their way to your desk. Once all clutter is removed, you can go on to the second step, which is to dig through the trash in search of those really important papers you threw out. This step is known as "fung me."

--The next step is to determine your various compass points. For this, we recommend that you use, well, a compass. Different directions carry different forces. For example, northwest is your travel site and west is your creativity site and southeast governs wealth. Then, using an octagonal map called a "bagua chart," easily obtainable off the Internet, you can determine how to align elements (wood, water, fire, uranium) and colors to direct the flow of positive energy through your home office. Sure, this might require you to relocate everything in your office, but won't it be worth it if your "chi" is properly aligned? You'll feel better almost immediately, though you won't be able to find anything.

--You may need to add some decorator items to your home office. For instance, feng shui often uses round mirrors to deflect bad energy and direct good energy. Some items, such as bamboo flutes, crystals, seashells, goldfish bowls, indoor fountains (collectively known as "junk"), can be purchased from Internet feng shui sites for only twice what they'd cost at Wal-Mart.

--Desks should never face a wall, as mine does, because it blocks the flow of energy and makes you feel "lo mein." If space is too tight to set your desk facing out, then place a mirror above your computer so you can see anyone sneaking in the door behind you. That way, you can see them and clear erotic e-mail off the screen faster than they can say "bruce lee."

--The color red can stimulate you and your fame, while green, properly placed, signals health and growth. This is why many feng shui experts recommend leaving your Christmas tree up year-round.

These are just basics, of course. If you want to really improve your "chi," then you should seek expert assistance. Look in the Yellow Pages under "bilk me."

Happy new year

May your 2008 be full of happiness and hilarity.

Best,

Steve