Working From Home

Too much being at home on my own is sending me slightly bonkers.

It's fun at first. You can dance. You can sing. You can do silly voices. In short, you can do all the things that you can't do with a teenage daughter in the house.

But after a while you start to go a bit strange. You're still singing, dancing and doing silly voices. But you've kind of forgotten that this is not normal behaviour.

Your frenzied thoughts bat you around the walls of your house like a rubber ball at the mercy of an enthusiastic infant. That's when you engage with the slow process of thinking yourself to death.

Before you know it you begin to wonder if other people really exist at all. Or whether it's all a joke at your expense. Kind of like the Truman show but without an audience.

It's not like I'm not used to spending time on my own. I've been on solitary retreats before. Totally alone. No telly. No radio. No iPod. They tend to go like this:

Day 1 You sit there on the first day, buoyed up by good spiritual intentions. You get all your little bits and pieces out: incense (check); little Buddha figure (check); herbal tea bags (check). Then you rearrange them a bit. Then you sit down to meditate and spend two hours on a cushion thinking about all the jobs you should have finished off before you left home.

Day 2 You calm down. Meditation is good. You feel alive and connected to the fabric of the universe.

Day 3 You giggle. A lot. I don't know why. You start to wonder if you need psychiatric help. But you don't care. You just look at the four walls around you and laugh out loud.

Day 4+ One of two things can happen. Either you regain equilibrium and find an inner peace that has previously been lacking in your life. Or you are taken away in an ambulance.

But I'm not on a solitary retreat. I'm working. Having insane thoughts. And reading emails from other insane people who are also working from home.

That's right. I'm working from home.

And, when you're working from home, no-one can hear you scream...