Tam Harbert

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.

As a professional journalist, I write about specific topics. Sometimes it’s a topic I’ve chosen and pitched to a publication. Sometimes it’s assigned by an editor. But either way, I have to follow that particular publication’s model, in terms of the angle on the topic as well as the tone and style of the writing. I also have to follow the directions of that particular editor, from which aspects of the story to emphasize to little copy-editing nits like whether to use the serial comma.

But with a blog, there is no editor. One of the joys of blogging is that I can write about anything I want, in any way I want to. No one tells me how to dot my I’s, cross my T’s or place my commas. That’s a great freedom. Freedom to show what a great writer I am. And freedom to display to the world my stupid mistakes.

We writers tend to be egotistical. That means we almost always think we have something worthwhile to say and know the best way to say it. We’re also rather solitary, introspective creatures, so we live in our heads to a large extent. We can easily convince ourselves that our way of looking at something is the only way or the best way, that everyone knows what we know, or for that matter that our readers care about what we care about. When I write about that little white house down the road, for example, it’s easy to forget that most of my readers don’t know I live in the D.C. area and am thus alluding to the residence of the president of the United States.

Of course, blogging is supposed to be a two-way channel, so readers can politely point out my errors, or loudly disagree with my point of view, or heckle me and throw rotten fruit. But at least initially I’d like to walk onto the stage without my slip showing.

I was feeling a little naked out here until a colleague of mine suggested we edit each other’s blogs. It’s a great arrangement. I can still write whatever I want, in any way I want. But my editor points out what works and what doesn’t, at least from his point of view. He helps make my blog better, because he gives me a second perspective that doesn’t come from inside my head (and sometimes even catches my spelling errors). The best part is I can still do things my way, if I insist (no serial commas), but the edit process stops me long enough to check myself in the mirror to make sure I’m not going to make a complete fool of myself.

Some days it seems like a neutron bomb has exploded across the country and I, sitting in the basement bunker that is my office, am the only person left. I reach out to the world, but get no response. My e-mails vanish into the ether. I don’t know whether they are being received or ignored. My voice mails start to sound a bit lonely and desperate, like a high school nerd trying to find a date. I call Comcast just to make sure the broadband connection is still up. Never reaching a real person (which is not unusual when you call Comcast) increases my paranoia.

There is no deep, dark conspiracy behind these days when no one is out there. They just happen, out of the blue, like when solar flares knock out satellite communications. I’m fairly sure that everyone has days like this, but since I work alone my overactive imagination can get the better of me. Maybe some horrid rumor is circulating and everyone – editors, sources, colleagues and friends – has decided to blackball me. Or I remember 9/11, when I was oblivious to what was happening in the world until my best friend e-mailed me one short, curt message: “Are you OK?”

I tune in to NPR just to make sure.

I roust my dog from his afternoon slumber, just to get a rise out of someone. Then I do the one thing that always guarantees an end to the silence: I take the rest of the day off. I used to be annoyed when I’d return to dozens of e-mail replies and returned phone calls, as if everyone had waited until they knew I was out of the office. But I’ve learned to chuckle at the cosmic joke. And be thankful that people still want to talk with me after all. And start again tomorrow.

In technology, there is a well-known marketing technique called FUD, which stands for fear, uncertainty and doubt. By playing on customers’ insecurities about doing things differently (i.e. buying from a different vendor), you keep them buying your products and services.

After spending the last year helping my son through the college application process, I’m convinced that the higher education industry engages in its own version of FUD. Starting in the ninth grade, and often even earlier, colleges, universities, school counselors and others start sowing fear in the minds of students: Fear that they won’t be good enough to get into a good college, or any college for that matter. They bombard students, and parents, with e-mails, meetings and automated phone messages about the importance of good grades, doing research to find the best college for you, spending time visiting college fairs and college campuses, working on those college applications, applying for scholarships and – ironically – not stressing out about the whole process.

I used to denigrate parents that got all caught up in this. But that was before my son hit junior year, when the campaign really ramps up, on its way to a fit of frenzy in the fall of senior year. On top of all the propaganda from the high school, which has a vested interest in perpetuating this in order to achieve statistics that will bolster its own status (“65 percent of our students go on to Ivy League schools!”), we also got a deluge of snail mail and e-mail from the colleges, the College Board (which administers the SAT test), test prep companies and consultants who advise parents on how to get their kids into the right college and how to pay for it. (One consultant who offered me a “free” consultation was really just selling life insurance.)

I’ve known we were being manipulated all along, but I’ve been swept away with the rest of them. We’ve spent thousands of dollars and several weeks on college visits, SAT prep courses and training/preparation to compete for scholarships. My son spent every Sunday from September through January on college applications and related work. It’s taken its toll: he is weary and his grades have suffered. I felt like I was working a second job, staying up late to file the incredible amount of forms to apply for various scholarships and financial aid.

In the end, he got into all five schools to which he applied. He got very attractive scholarship offers from his two top choices. Now he’s trying to decide.

In retrospect, the most useful part of this process was the college visits. That was worth the investment and the time. As for all the rest, I doubt that it helped much. In the end, I think he would’ve gotten the same results without all the frenzy. But I can’t be sure. That’s the FUD, and so it goes on. There are a lot of people who benefit from this horrible system. Unfortunately, students and their parents are not among them.

As I work on a story about new ways that managers are monitoring employees, I’m reminded of and increasingly grateful for one of the biggest advantages of the freelance life: my time is my own.

When I worked for a company, I generally had to be in the office by 9 in the morning. During the course of the day, I was expected to sit at my desk, work on a computer, talk on the phone, and attend meetings. If I left before 5 p.m., I had to have a good reason. (They never seemed to mind, however, if I stayed late.)

I’ve always struggled with traditional 9-to-5 hours. I have never been a morning person. I may be awake and at my desk by 9 a.m., but I’m not fully conscious until about 10 a.m. Being able to set my own hours has been a huge blessing. I can structure my day according to my own circadian rhythms. I try to start at 9 a.m., but I do undemanding work, like going through e-mails or reading my daily news sites, until 10 a.m. when my brain is up. I’ll work steadily until about 12:30, then break to go to the gym, run errands or do some housework. My energy peaks in late afternoon, so 2 till about 7 is my most productive time. I try to reserve my heaviest mental lifting for then. I’ll break for dinner and evening activities, but often go back to my computer to wrap up loose ends between 10 and midnight.

That’s my typical schedule, but it’s not set in stone. If I have a lot of work, I’m at my desk at 7 a.m. (with a huge mug of coffee) and work till midnight. If the workload is light, I take the day off. If it stays light, I spend my days marketing myself to new publications and editors. Or teaching myself new skills like how to do more with Wordpress or how to search for sources on Twitter. If the workload is medium and it’s Opening Day, I go to the ballpark.

The point is, I’m free to use my time in the most productive ways. In traditional jobs, employers are in charge of time and they decide what’s productive. They watch not only when employees are in the office, but increasingly what employees do on the computer. They use technology that blocks websites, and not just the pornographic ones or the shopping sites, but also social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Network administrators keep logs of what websites employees frequent. Some employers even install software that records every key stroke and captures screenshots.

If I waste two hours socializing on Facebook, nobody cares, but I may pay the price in lost productivity and lost revenue. On the other hand, I may spend an hour figuring out how to do specific searches on Twitter, which may lead me to the perfect source for a particular story. That’s productive.

As a freelancer, I have the constant pressure of meeting deadlines and earning enough income to live. But I’ll take that any day over a rigid schedule set by others and ruled by their judgments about how I should spend the most precious thing I own: my time.

Sometimes, when I’m on a deadline, my head hurts. And I think I know why. There’s a war going on in there, a war between my left brain and my right brain.

When I’m reporting a story, it’s all very logical. My left brain is in full control of the situation. I conduct research. I talk to people. I ask questions. I gather answers. If something doesn’t make sense, I ask for an explanation. Most of the time, my emotions don’t play much of a part in this process. I’m cool and efficient.

I’m nothing if not thorough in reporting. I usually gather too much information for any given story. That means when I finally sit down to write, I’m overwhelmed. Where to start? How to make sense of all this?

My left brain is nearly always the one to dig in first. The left brain is logical, analytical, objective. It looks at each snippet of information and tries to build a linear sequence. That becomes my rough outline. Often this works. But sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the parts just don’t fit together logically.

That’s when my right brain steps in. And that’s when the trouble begins.

The right brain is intuitive, random, subjective. It likes to synthesize parts into a big picture. My left brain bats it back, saying, “Hey, I’m in control. If I just try harder with this outline, I’ll get everything to hang together and it’ll be a great story.” My left brain insists on handling each tidbit of information like a piece of colored glass. It reviews my notes and my outline, sorts the pieces into piles, by shape, by color, over and over.

My right brain usually stands back and lets my left brain bang itself against the wall for awhile. Then, after ol’ Lefty is battered, bruised and hopelessly confused, Ms. Right will step in and sigh. “Take it easy,” she says. “Go for a walk. Take a nap.”

Researchers who study the brain are finding that daydreaming is actually an important thought process. New brain-scanning studies suggest that our brain may be most actively engaged when we just let go and let our mind wander. “Solving a problem with insight is fundamentally different from solving a problem analytically,” one researcher told The Wall Street Journal. “There really are different brain mechanisms involved.”

When I come back from my walk or wake up refreshed from my nap, I often find that my right brain has taken those bits of colored glass and created a beautiful mosaic. I sit down and start writing, and everything flows together into a nicely packaged story, sometimes with an insight or conclusion that I never knew was there.

Chalk one up for the right brain. At least until the next story, when the battle begins anew.

As we packed for our Thanksgiving trek to the family homestead last week, my son was stuffing his laptop into the suitcase when I pointed out that his aunt might not have WiFi access at her house. At first, he looked at me like I was speaking Russian. Then, as he grokked the concept, he looked at me as if he were being consigned to Siberia.

Age 17, he barely remembers a time when he couldn’t access the Internet from anywhere. Even I, who remembers dialing a rotary phone, have a hard time recalling how many phone calls and how much legwork was required when I first started working as a reporter in the 1980s. I couldn’t google a company to find the exact spelling of its corporate name, its location and a description of its product or service. I used to spend hours chasing down such basic information.

During our holiday, we drove through the sparse Kansas farmland in search of the town where my mother was born and raised. Ost, Kansas, consists of a handful of buildings dominated by St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and the parish school, which houses a total of 94 students in grades 1 through 12. We couldn’t remember exactly where Ost was, but trusted that if we got within a few miles we’d be able to spot the church steeple. No hills and very few trees make this wonderfully possible in the Sunflower State. Instead, my son whipped out his iPhone with GPS.

Problem solved. Adventure cut short.

I wonder what we are giving up when answers come so easily. In the past, it took discipline, planning, imagination and determination to track down a piece of information or to find a tiny town in the vast prairie. Today, it’s literally at our fingertips. There was courage, adventure, challenge and reward in the struggle to uncover a fact or solve a problem. Now, it’s tempting to give up if we can’t find an answer quickly and easily. Like the proverbial tree in the woods that makes no sound if no one’s there to hear it fall, what happens to information that’s not on Google? Will anyone be willing to hunt for answers? I fear we may just stop asking the questions. What an ironic side effect of the Information Age.

Postscript: Even if we are willing to hunt for answers, they may no longer be there because apparently no one’s preserving the archives of dying newspapers: http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/01/05/archives-in-peril-generations-of-history-gone-with-the-flip-of/