World of Work

Yesterday I was running late to work - the Dude had slept late and was slow to awaken. Dropped Dude at Pre-School, and began the commute to work. Almost there, speeding along 35E at 70 mph, I glanced to my right to begin moving to the right lane, and the exit to Yankee Doodle Road (God - what an awful name), and I spied the Dude's lunch box still on my front seat!

That just set me off - much colorful cussing. Exit on Yankee Friggin' Doodle Road and turn around to drop off the lunch. After finally arriving at my desk - 10:15 - I began to wonder if it's really worth it. I spend over one hour a day commuting, burning fossil fuels and running my old Saturn into the ground. Meanwhile, our house for which we pay a modest mortgage each month, sits empty from 8:30 - 2:00 each day - - except for Fluffy the Hamster. I got to thinking, if I could work from home I would. Despite the mess, it is a relaxing place - no cubes, no piped-in "white noise", no hour-long commutes.

Stumbled across an interesting line of posts in Instapundit (and here) this morning. Given yesterday's chaos, I find myself interested in the idea of cottage industries, and work returning to the home. Interesting bit about working outside the home and family.

Family: One of the standard negative depictions from the Gray Flannel Suit era featured a disconnect between the world of work -- to which fathers trudged off en masse to downtown office buildings where they performed inscrutable tasks, from which they returned exhausted and in need of martinis -- and the world of family. Kids had little idea what their fathers did; [Most parents I know have a hard time explaining just what it is they do at work. HobbledRunner.] fathers knew little about what their kids did. Husbands and wives moved in different worlds.

The entry of women into the workforce in large numbers has helped this a little, I suppose, but not a lot, especially where the kids are concerned. But kids who get to watch their parents work up close -- the way that kids did in the pre-Industrial Revolution "cottage industry" days -- are likely to have a much greater appreciation of how the world of work operates. Perhaps -- also like kids in the pre-Industrial Revolution days -- they'll mature more quickly as a result, though here I am perhaps being overoptimistic. At the very least, however, they'll see work behavior "modeled" in their presence. Instead of "take your daughter (or son) to work" day, it'll be "take work to your kids" every day. (And spouses tend to know a lot more about the work of self-employed spouses, for better or worse.) I'm not enough of a sociologist -- or a psychic -- to analyze all the changes that may result from this phenomenon, but I feel pretty confident that there will be changes. TechCentralStation

Sounds like I want to leave the corporate world, but what would I do?