I do still miss the office and the daily contact with my colleagues, but now that I’m getting my routines in place, it’s working out better and better, I am even finding new advantages in working from home.

Routines help. I go to “work” at the same time every morning, when Eric and the kids leave for work and school. I put on “work” clothes in the morning, instead of lounging around in the same comfy-but-worn things all day, every day. I take a proper break in the middle of the day for exercise and lunch.

The advantages mostly stem from flexibility. The difficult part is balancing that flexibility against the routine. I can go out for a long walk whenever I want – but because it’s so flexible, I keep thinking that I’ll just finish this little thing and go out later, and the “later” never quite arrives.

Today, though, I made great use of my flexibility and took some self-portraits in my home office at the end of my lunch break. I would feel more than a bit awkward doing that in the office.