It has just occurred to me that I have become a stationary road warrior. This may sound a bit odd. A contradiction in terms. Even oxymoronic (or perhaps plain moronic) but hold off the derision for just a second. Let me explain.
I employee all the techniques and technology of the mobile office worker class that was briefly popularized as “a road warrior” (before becoming the standard template that all white-collar workers must aspire to) yet I do it all within the confines of my own home. This is something that occurs at times, but most often during the breaks from classes during which I cease being a student and become, instead, a member of suburbia. To wit: I employ a laptop constantly, on and off battery. It has become an important habit of my day to scrounge up the laptop (which I properly shut down–instead of hibernating/sleeping–about once a week), the power block+plug, and the docking port which I must use to keep the laptop from melting said power block+plug. This has a ritual sense to it in the same way I imagine a drug addict would prepare his dose. I must uncurl the power plug, bend the dock’s plug out of its inset storage space, plug it in, then plug the power plug in. This sets up the base workspace.
Then comes the communication equipment. I have two phones, one that works marginally, the other that works completely. The cell phone (charger in bag) gets little to no reception in my house, enough to tell me that there is a call about 50% of the time. When at work, I find the window in which it gets the most reception, place it there, and hang a Bluetooth earpiece on the side of my head. Communication method two is the house phone. We have a portable wireless set, which I grab and sit next to me.
The internet is provided by my home’s wireless internet. From this infernal fount comes all. I use Google to give me news (no TV channels within this household), entertainment, documents, notebooks, and spreadsheets. I didn’t even bother re-installing Trillian after the latest reformat; I use AIM-in-Gmail now. Music alternates, I’ve decided that Pandora is far too distracting and left it behind in the reformat, instead I use Last.Fm tuned to my own playlist; otherwise I grab my iRiver mp3 player (charger in bag) and plug it into my laptop and play music off of that.
I then make use of either a USB key (two in pocket) or portable HDD (in bag, with all the fixings) to backup and work with data. This data/project/writing/website/whatnot is then uploaded to the internet for backup/display to client.
Truly this is the process envisioned for their workforce by the CIOs of a few years ago. Plugged in and hard at work. My processes are streamlined.
I have set up a mobile office in my living room.
Truly, I need to get out of the house more.
