-- Monday, July 12, 1999 --

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9:59 a.m. Sometimes it's so hard to get your bearings on Monday mornings. Even when you work at home. Especially when you work at home? No -- I think people are snappish and fussy wherever they work. Trying to get your bearings. Grit in the gears, and all.

And it's so hard to be sure you should be where you actually are. Some people drive to the office and wash out Friday's mug and think: "I really should be working for myself ..." And some people pad, half-clothed, to their office in the den and think: "This is crazy! I've got to get out there and get a real job ..."

I've been debating the finer points of working at home for almost as long as I've been working at home, which is a little over twenty years now. I still remember my last paying job with extreme fondness, especially the part about hanging around the coffee machine all day long -- and I still got paid. Or, talking with each and every coworker, about whatever we wanted to talk about, really, in their office or mine -- and I still got paid. Or, playing with office supplies in the Xerox room, or Xeroxing my hands and my rings, and you guessed it: I still got paid. Just amazing.

Now, I work 24-7 and nobody, but nobody, pays me. Pure labor of love, this is. Today there was a fire engine that stopped right across the street with that whee-oop sudden drop of the siren. I was happy to see two people pop directly out of their doors to look and see -- two more people than I thought -- who are home during the day, during these traditional working hours. Two more people, in addition to just me, only me. And then the excitement was over and everybody went back inside, back to their own private Idahoes.

3:46. Well, that distraction led to another, and another and my little mental brazier wouldn't catch fire this morning no matter how much I breathed on it. I was trying to find an article in the paper about work to share with you, and I looked through an entire stack, got sidetracked by the Blair Witch Project, had a heavy lunch and a light nap, and now I'm back. The worst thing about working at home is that there's no free soda. I've got to pay for my own Tab.

The article was here on my desk the whole time, by the way. Under things. It's about this wonderful artist named Liza Lou, and as her contribution to the world, she covers whole environments with shiny glass beads. Every single millimeter of an entire life-size back yard or kitchen is recreated in millions and millions of beads. In the interview, she is asked about her work.

And she said:

"A friend who's a Zen Buddhist came over to my house, and he said, 'You're meditating.' I realized for the first time that the process of my work was prayer. Your head is bowed, your eyes aren't closed or you'll make a mess, but you're attending to the smallest, smallest thing. It's a way of blessing everything you're touching. It really transformed things for me. You have to stop looking at the clock and stop thinking in a linear way. The nature of this work can give you a nervous breakdown -- or teach you how to take life by the smallest detail and do it well. If you can do that, you've got it."

I guess the question you should be asking yourself is not where do you work, but what do you do for work? Not: what do you do for your paycheck? But: what do you do for your salvation? If you love it, truly love it, the work will set you free.

Once (actually, more than once) my father came home to say he was afraid he was going to be fired. My mother naturally reacted in total panic. He was home early and my mother was sitting down with the burned and splotchy pot holder still curled in her hand. Getting fired -- in a brilliant flash, I look up from my Pick-Up-Stix and I understand! I could picture the native barbarian meanie they called The Big Boss putting him into a pot and then boiling him down -- his fingers to the bone -- for the last drops of sweat from his brow, which he said was what they wanted. Wow! What could be worse than getting fired?

So, that's the best thing about working at home: not the naps, the jammies, the long, uninterrupted trains of thought. If you haven't been hired, it may sometimes get unbearably hot, but you can't be fired.

Tomorrow -- it's Tuesday. Whew!