Archive for April, 2008

Moving the Mobile

Monday, April 21st, 2008

We’re moving.

I’ve moved enough times to know just how challenging moves can be, but also how freeing. Moves are an opportunity to put things into storage, take things out of storage; to buy new things, sell old things, and throw out the rest; to strategize and to worry; to feel nostalgia and nausea. I’ve also moved my office, which can be described (borrowing from one description of Boston’s Big Dig) as performing heart surgery on a tennis player … during the Wimbeldon finals. What I have never done, however, is moved my kids.

Their world is this home. The idea of living someplace else might sound interesting, but I know it has no reality in their heads. Just as they believe their day care teachers exist only at the school, like lamp fixtures, so does “home” mean here, right now. Likewise, I wonder if their subconscious sense of “daddy” is connected to a room we’ll never see again.

Building my new office is more than a logistics challenge. It means establishing both a new haven, where I can escape the happenings in the house, and a new set of boundaries, where I must teach the kids not to cross. And my office, on the same floor as their bedrooms, will be both more approachable.

The truth? I have no idea what to expect. For someone who cherishes mobility, this move is harder than I thought.

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Mobile Office, Mobile Throne

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

On Sunday, I took Siena to the local coffee shop for a morning out, just Daddy and daughter. I brought along several books, some markers and paper, a magazine for me (just in case), and for fun and decoration I also brought along a small, stuffed ladybug. In many ways, it was as if I were packing not my own office stuff, but rather Siena’s.

The clincher? Her mobile office also includes a portable toilet.

I had never considered just how similar packing for myself is to packing for the kids. Their diaper bag is their briefcase, with wet wipes just as critical to their well-being as a power cord is to mine. Siena’s need — or my need for her, I suppose — is to be as self-sufficiently productive as possible. She and I both want to believe that we can be just as happy, functional, and healthy regardless of whether we are at home or outside the home. There is no reason we can’t live our lives inside as well as outside the physical boundaries of our daily existences. And if that means I have to lug a toilet around on the public bus, then so be it. Just as I fight the stereotypical limitations of a working man, so in a way did I get to witness and even participate in Siena’s own exploration of those kinds of limits.

I work hard to be simultaneously successful as an entrepreneur and a father. I am amused that the answer to at least one of these might be found in a potty.

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Plugged In and Tied Down

Friday, April 4th, 2008

My family traveled to New Jersey this weekend, to attend my sister-in-law’s wedding. It’s a short ride for adults, but with children who choose not to nap along the way, it contains moments of gruel.

I brought along my laptop, of course. Arguably, it was a tool for showing DVDs to the kids: connected by adapter to the car’s power, I had intended to watch movies for as long as they remained interested. Instead, the adapter failed, and after 20 minutes of “Sorceror’s Apprentice” on our Fantasia disc, my computer shut off with finality. The kids cried for more. I, too, was surpremely annoyed. My thought at that moment was how much harder it would be to check my email.

Most self-employed professionals will tell you how hard it is to take a vacation. The big annual, national conference for my profession is happening later in the month, and if it’s anything like last year, over half of all attendees will be bringing work with them. You can see them with their stacks of paper; in the workshops, at snack breaks, and in the lobby after dinner, my colleagues will all be fighting that same kind of overlap I write about in this blog. Our work is sometimes like a too-heavy meal that seemed delicious when it was plated, but makes us feel regretful a little while later. Instead of “vacationing” with my family, I tether my computer to the motel room’s only three-prong outlet, which is in the bathroom. I worry not about one deadline, but about four.

At 2:30am, I quit. At 8:30am, I sit in the lobby drinking terrible coffee and shunning the individually wrapped bagels. The rest of my family is having breakfast with more of the rest of my family.

Am I overworked? Is this workaholism? I tell myself that a workaholic wouldn’t have made the effort even to come to New Jersey, but of course that’s ridiculous. For a guy who insists on carrying everything on his shoulders, from diapers to disk drives, there is no vacate in vacation. People use the term “in house” to describe work you don’t actually bring home. There aren’t any cool words for working at the bathroom.

Mickey Mouse had walking brooms. I have my computer. Neither one of us is very good at maintaining limits.

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