Hi honey, I’m home!

I know it’s cliche, but working from home means that I can work in my slippers. I can stay in my pyjamas until three o’clock if I want to. I never have to worry about turning up on time and there’s never too many trips to the kitchen to make tea.

People come round occasionally — although far less regularly than they used to. Most of my clients are scattered around nationally and internationally — so most of the time it’s just the two of us.

Working from home, mostly alone, doesn’t suit everyone, but it’s suited me well. When I look back on the jobs I had before working for myself, I was mostly miserable. I have a nasty, really nasty, anti-authoritarian streak so I hated being told what to do, by bosses or by anyone else. I like things done my way and that made me a terrible team player. So I set up my own business, became my own boss. That was in 1998 and I’ve often said over the years that I’ve been self-employed so long, I’m pretty much unemployable by anyone else.

Things have been changing though. For the last year I’ve been working on a smaller number of longer projects. I’ve designed for ISO, the Home Office — on a project I’d be thrown in jail for mentioning — and for STV, Scottish Television. Working with STV has meant me spending most of my working week in Glasgow and for the first time in over a decade I’m working in an office, with people, real people. Every morning I walk to work. I have a desk. My desk, in a cubicle. And a phone. I eat in the canteen and I mostly fail to avoid being tempted by the vending machine.

Then in January, an industry friend recommended me to a new client. They’re big and the project I’m now working on is a big one. I’m responsible for responsive design. You won’t see anything I’m making until almost 2014 and I’m not allowed to say more than that.

Working on this project means that for two weeks every month for the next year I’m part of a team of designers and developers. That’s a new experience for me. I work with people who have opinions about how we’re doing what we’re doing. Sometimes people tell me what to do. I wasn’t sure how I’d react to all this. The petulant teenager in my personality came out at first. I was cynical, aloof and a little bit aggressive. I think that’s because I’d told myself for years that I couldn’t work in a place like this. A place with a dress code, dress-down Fridays (yes, you pay a Pound), security badges and a tannoy when the sandwich van man arrives.

But you know what? I was wrong. I love it. It’s the best thing I’ve done in years.

For those two weeks a month I get up at seven (not nine). I drive (not stagger) for an hour to their office (not mine.) I like the people I work with. I like what we’re designing and how we’re designing it. I take sandwiches and tea bags. I leave a mug there. I took a training course on data security. I answer email. Sometimes even the same day.

At home we joke about my ‘going to work.’ Me saying “at work today” still sounds silly. When I get back, the ‘Hi honey I’m home!’ joke is still funny.

Well, I laugh at least. Because I’m the happiest I’ve been in years.