Successfully working from home requires balance, motivation, leaving the house, and separating work from personal life.

Enjoy the benefits of working from home: Not having to commute, not having to interact with the Dwight Shrudes of the world, being able to focus on work when you want, "Judge Judy is on right now, I think I will take a break". Developing your own schedule, I mean the boss is not over your shoulder and if you need to go for a run, walk the dog, or get away from the desk then go do your thing. One of my favorite parts of my work week from home was the weekly hour long conference calls with my co-workers. I usually spent this time on my laptop with the cell phone on mute, sitting on my deck, by the pool, while barbequing chicken kabobs on the Weber, and having an ice cold Corona.

What sucks (for me) about working from home was when to turn the damn computer off which was partly my employer and partly my doing getting too involved in projects and realizing that I have been sitting in front of the computer for 13 hours and forgot to take a shower, sitting in the same thing I slept in the night before, bed head, butt stuck to the chair. Also, not leaving the house for weeks at a time - Why leave? My kitchen is stocked with food, I recently moved to a new State and did not know anyone, no kids to take to school or anything, and everything is here in my house. I realized not leaving the house was a problem when I tried cutting my hand and making a hand print on a soccer ball shaped like a man's face to have a little interaction with someone.

The one guy I met who had the ultimate work at home job was this guy in Las Vegas I did some web design work for and he had amateur adult sites where he did the entire filming, photo taking, and web site work from his house. He had random 18-30 year old girls over everyday who he would take pictures of and do his thing with on his video camera, and that was truly the best work at home job I have ever seen, but this goes into a whole new topic of balancing your time spent working form home with time spent at the clinic for checkups. Also, watch were you sit when you visit his house, "Hey Buddy wait a minute, didn't I just see this mug I am drinking out of used as a prop in that last video I saw".

Now, I work fulltime in an in-house position again. The commute definitely sucks with gas prices going up and idiots who still do not know how to drive. But, for me personally, I like being forced out of the house daily, and interacting with my co-workers. Just the early shower and dressing up for work, stopping by the gym on the way home has actually been really good for me. I think I did the work from home thing too long and kind of burned out the whole fun factor. I wouldn't mind working from home full-time again; I know that if the option came up again I could consider doing it. For me, it seemed like life was kind of passing me by and I was missing out in something. Even if what I was missing was just driving and flipping off the guy who cut me off on the freeway on the way home. Also, there is nothing like flirting with the hot secretary in the office, or BS-ing around the water cooler about American Idol.

It's 1:00pm right now and I am sitting at my desk typing this, and makes me think about the chicken kabobs and ice cold Corona….ah those were the good ole days.