Tam Harbert

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a week. Really. Then I told myself, “hey, it’s August. Everybody’s on vacation. It’s not like the six people who read my blog are going to actually miss it.”

I put off starting a blog for a long time. I knew once I started I’d have to post regularly. At least that’s what all the experts say. And I knew my habits well enough to understand what that would mean. Without an editor setting a deadline, I expend tremendous amounts of emotional energy just to psych myself into sitting down and writing.

Even with an editor imposing a deadline, my procrastination tendencies often back me into a corner when it comes time to file a story. I love to report, conduct research and interview people. I also love to write. But there is this strange no-man’s land in between those two activities, where my brain acts like a seven-year-old with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Unless I’ve got a brilliant idea for a post, or the results of my reporting have yielded a fantastic story that I just can’t wait to tell, anything and everything becomes a diversion. Suddenly, I must:

- Run out for Starbucks. I don’t even like Starbucks.
- Walk the dog, even though I have to wake him up to do it.
- Bathe the dog. Ditto.
- Check my social networks. Facebook alone is good for killing at least an hour.
- Check how the stock market is doing. As if it makes any difference to my pathetic nest egg.
- Search freelance sites for job opportunities. I can always justify the time spent as “marketing.”
- Call former editors and colleagues. Ditto.
- Research some obscure question on the Internet. Did you know that Mozart’s full baptismal name was Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart?
- Perform routine computer maintenance, including deleting thousands of e-mail messages, running security scans and updating software.
- Make personal appointments. Hair cuts. Dental appointments. Don’t I deserve a massage this week?

My personal favorite: Making lists of what I’m going to do on each of the next few days. This makes me feel tremendously productive.

While these things keep me busy, they don’t divert my brain much. I think a lot about what I’m going to write. I compose the article in my head. I like to say that the entire piece is all completed, all that’s left is the mechanics of getting it down on paper. Hell, Mozart did it. “Everything has been composed, just not written down,” he once told his nagging father.

Problem is, I’m not Mozart. And even if I were, that “writing down” part takes a long time, even with a computer. I’d better get started.

Too bad it’s time for my pedicure . . .

As every freelancer knows, working from home has its pros and its cons. Among the pros: spending all that extra time with family. Among the cons: having family assume that since you’re there, you’re always available to them. We’ve all had to manage this delicate balance.

I’ve adjusted to different types of interruptions as my son has grown. When he was a baby, his schedule ruled. Until he went to daycare, I crammed my work into the short slots of time between naps, feedings and play dates. As he grew, the types of interruptions changed. As a boy, he sometimes seemed to demand my uninterrupted attention just when I was in the thick of a conference call. But he gradually learned to refrain from interrupting me when I was on the phone, “unless there’s blood or fire involved.” (We later added water to that directive, after he shyly and sheepishly called down the steps to me one day that water was coming through the ceiling. The upstairs toilet had overflowed and he was trying to stem the tide by himself.)

Even now, at age 18, he sometimes bounds into the house – if he’s with with his cadre of friends, it sounds like a herd of elephants – and starts asking for money or the car before he even reaches my office, only to find me with the phone to my ear, glaring at him.

As kid interruptions subsided, pet interruptions escalated. There was always the dog, whimpering at the front door for a walk. As he reached middle age, my Yorkie developed seizures. Many times I conducted an interview while stroking and comforting his quivering five-pound body splayed out on the floor. He also had stomach problems. I became expert at discerning the distinctive retch in time to scoop him up off the carpet and onto the hardwood floor (for easier post-interview clean-up).

That dog now is also 18. He’s blind, deaf and arthritic, and sleeps most of the time. Still, when he wakes up and figures out I’m not in the same room, he goes hunting for me. He’ll sit at the top of the stairs whining until I come to carry him down to my first-floor office. And I’ve learned that I can’t ignore that whine for long – he’s tumbled down those stairs more than once.

Like an old man with Alzheimer’s, he sometimes wanders aimlessly around my office. He usually ends up ensnared in the nest of wires and cables behind my desk. I know he’s back there when my speakers start inching away from me.

Soon, both son and dog will leave – one for college and the other for the great beyond. It will be quiet around here. My work days will run more smoothly. Gone will be all those interruptions. And I’ll cry, missing them terribly.