‘Office working has never suited me’

Sheree Lowe, also known as SundownerVA, is the latest contributor to the Home Office Gallery with her fascinating itemisation of the bits and pieces she carries round as a mobile worker. This is what she told me in the email that accompanied her photo:

‘Office working has never suited me. The main reason for this is that I feel completely stifled by routine. One of the reasons I stopped working for someone else was that when I walked into the office, I knew what I would be doing that day … and I knew what I would be doing the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and could see my dreary working life mapped out, all the way to the horizon.

‘Working for myself, no two days are the same, and the day I am expecting when I wake up in the morning is not usually the day I’m reflecting back on that evening! I love how great opportunities constantly come up if you’re open to them, and if you’re not in the right mood for something on one particular day, no worries, you can adjust your day accordingly. And THAT is why I don’t have an office! I don’t have a separate space for a home office at home, and I will never rent any office space if I can avoid it.’

I love this firstly because it confirms my own belief that you don’t need a dedicated space for a home office, and it’s always nice to feel right, and secondly because it so neatly sums up the reasons so many of us choose this path and continue on it, even when it gets hard – very hard – and a job and salary seem such a tempting alternative.

Sheree asked me why I set up Work from Home Wisdom. The short answer is that I work for myself because working for someone else feels limiting and lacking in fulfilment. And I’m doing this work relating to home working because I previously ran a cleaning business that was financially very successful but mind-numbingly dull.

I knew that my next venture had to be something that drew much more on my experience and skills and allowed me to express myself more, and after a very long time this is what it turned out to be! I’m still working on how to make it as financially viable as the cleaning business, and I’ll be telling you more about my plans soon.

Why have you chosen to do what you do? Was it carefully planned or did you fall into it by accident?