Working from home – the reality.
15 Mar 2010 2 Comments
in Bespoke learning solutions, Home, RAF, Technology, Training
Everyone I know who doesn’t do this usually says to me ‘Oh you lucky thing’, or ‘Oh, yes ‘working’ from home’, with a heavy dollop of sarcasm attached to the word working. Or I get the knowing look that means ‘yeah right, you spend your entire day shopping on the internet’.
The key word here is ‘working’, and then the assumptions that people make when you tell them you do this from somewhere other than a traditional office.
In this technological age there are very few reasons why working from home cannot be an effective and efficient way to run a business or carry out your role.
Rapidly improving wireless technology and broadband are putting paid to turning your laptop on half an hour before you need to do anything, or having to have bulky great printers cluttering up the place. Scanners can now be so small you can fit them in your briefcase, along with similarly sized projectors. Just visithttp://www.takeware.co.uk/ReceiptAngel/ and have a look to see what I mean.
There are environmental positives to working from home – not least of which not adding to the daily grind of traffic, in my case blocking up the A19 & A64 around York.
Working from home is hard work in ways that some people don’t appreciate. It is very difficult to absent yourself competely from the domestic trivia that surrounds you, the piles of washing/dirty crockery/ironing/grocery shopping or whatever that form 70% of my other job, being Mrs Whyatt.
It is also difficult to switch off. But I try hard to find a balance between wanting to grow my business and having a relationship with my husband, even if I do want to check email at 11pm at night.
There are other down sides. Like the sense of isolation that can creep up on you unexpectedly, or the frustrations that come from having lots to do, and sometimes nobody to talk over how you are going to do it. However, I have found being part of Twitter invaluable in this. Not only can I keep in touch with existing colleagues, who keep my spirits up and offer advice and guidance, but I create new relationships through this platform too.
In my case, there are many personal positives for choosing to run my business from a home office as opposed to a more traditional option.
My unique challenges when working from home are my ‘staff’ (two elderly lady cats and a year old golden retriever), and the fact that I live just by the end of the runway at an RAF flying training base. Both of which make conference calls in particular especially tricky.
I have to plan my time accordingly and attempt to only call clients when the flying programme is taking a break – but then find myself removing a grumpy cat from my keyboard, or a filthy chewed item of what was clean laundry from the dog in the middle of the call anyway. On one memorable occasion, when delivering an online webcast for the Institute of IT Training recently, one of the cats tried to jump on my lap, missed, and drove her claws squarely into my bottom. Not quite in the script.
Apart from that (!) I find basing myself at home incredibly beneficial to my state of mind and productivity.
I am able to keep my costs down significantly and can pass that benefit onto my clients.
I can focus on a task and give it all my attention – brilliant when planning or carrying out routine tasks.
Great technology allows me to do pretty much everything that I would in a ‘normal’ office, and being close to York means I can get around the UK via public transport pretty quickly.
So if my only distractions are of the purring, panting and pilot variety, I think I am doing pretty well, and feel overall, my unique challenges ultimately enhance my workplace by making me work effectively and efficiently to cope with them.
Onward and upward and all that.
04 Feb 2010 Leave a Comment
in Home, Housing, RAF, Training
Right. So, here we are at the end of another eventful couple of weeks.
Let’s start with the good stuff. My company, Lightning Training Limited www.lightningtraining.com, gained accredited training provider status with the Institute of IT Training this week.
WHOOP!
Which is great, and has given me a)lots to think about and b)lots to do.
The naff part of the week is the raging behemoth that is the RAF casting it’s runes about our future.
We now have about 6 months left here at RAF Linton, and are currently reeling from a recent conversation with hubster’s poster talking about sending him to do a ground tour in Wiltshire.
WAAAHHHHH!
Not what we wanted. Still, many a slip twixt cup and lip. We’ll wait and see what happens.
Until then, Team Whyatt have regrouped, rearmed and ready for whatever does happen. Wiltshire, Hampshire, whatever – we get on with it and cope as we always do.
So – onward and upward. What other direction is there?!
Home is where the heart is
10 Jan 2010 1 Comment
in Home, Housing, RAF Tags: Home, Military Housing, RAF
Hmm. Another frustrating read of the Sunday Times Homes supplement. Home envy – it’s a disease.
I grew up in military accommodation until I was about 5 (ish) when my Mum & Dad got their first house in Johnstone near Haverfordwest (Dad was flying Hunters at Brawdy).
We then moved to Binbrook, and spent the first few months at 1 Salisbury Avenue before moving into the village to 3 Manor Drive (along with half of RAF Binbrook – or so it seemed).
Several years later, I married an RAF pilot. And moved into quarters. Well, actually, we first moved into a portacabin – which was like living in a Wendy house for 4 months. We figured, first off, that having not lived together before we got married, anything was a bonus – and we were right. We had no expectations, and the portacabin certainly lived up to them. Heady times followed as we moved into our first proper house in Salmond Drive. Little were we to know we’d be posted to live next door a few years later.
Military housing. It’s, overall, actually pretty good. As long as you don’t mind the following:
Endless sodding magnolia paint and nineteen layers of white gloss. Aaargh.
Crap kitchens with workspace the equivalent size of a postage stamp. Oh, and cabinets that don’t shut properly and odd spaces for things that make no sense (single cupboard by the back door for example.)
Crap bathrooms. Up until a few years ago, showers were a novelty. We now have them, but they are pants, and generally as effective as standing under a spitting camel. With a dry throat.
Art installations otherwise known as alarming cracks in the plaster work/strange plumbing combinations/added odd bits of building.
Boilers which don’t.
Cookers that are not big enough for any of the roasting tins you have and that you have to put on 3 days before you want to cook anything.
Carpet that is either antique, with all the accompanying stains, or ‘new’ and in some revolting colourway that is just vile. I am currently living with an attractive raspberry pink.
Anything that goes wrong can only be put right by reporting everything in triplicate. And only if you are a man/serving officer. I had to resort to taking my two sewage covered dogs into the office at our previous posting to get them to accept there was a sewage leak in our garden. We were there 6 years and they never did fix it. It was a figment of my imagination apparently.
But the really special part of living in quarters is the fact you can’t do anything. Well, not officially. So you can be really daring and apply a paint that is not magnolia (gasp), but that’s about it. Bar a few shelves. And in The Chosen One’s case, a few holes to wire up the Bose surround sound/uber television combo in every downstairs room.
And remember – all of this has to be put back the way it was when you moved in when you move out.
Which is such a sodding nonsense. You pick up the keys to your new quarter, and the first thing that happens (generally) is that a team of removal men start tromping round it. It is usually raining. So the ‘clean’ house (which it NEVER is) is very dirty, very quickly.
So I suffer from house envy. A lot. Chums who have made their way out of the tunnels to escape to their own homes cause me to silently gnash my teeth. They have range cookers. That work. In kitchens which they can change to suit their needs.
They have gardens.
They have plans for improvements. And can do them.
Still.
Home IS where the heart is. I’m am happier nowhere else. Our ‘things’ make it our home – no matter what the bricks and mortar make up. It’s a place of refuge and solace, much merriment and hangovers, great dinner parties and comfort. I love to share it with those who are close to me. It soothes me, and provides the respite The Chosen One requires to get out there and do his job – and the sanctuary he returns to from places hot and sandy.
But I still can’t help sighing over the supplements.
