Tikkabik

My boss travels frequently, often to our corporate headquarters on the East Coast, but seemingly just as often to trade shows, conferences and other events. Since we're a small group -- there's only three of us who work together to put news up on the site -- that often puts me in the position of having to cover things more than I'd like.

Actually, this is more of a mental hurdle for me to get over than it is a legitimate logistical problem. Fact is, whether he's home or not, I have about the same amount of work to do, and have about the same latitude to do it with. When he's at home, Jim is so often tied up with other tasks that he's not able to "mind the store," as it were.

But when he's on the road I *feel* like I have to do things differently If I step away from the computer. I get paranoid that something's going to happen that I might miss. Because, well, it's *happened.* There was a running joke between us for a while that the farther away I got from my computer, the greater the magnitude of the breaking story.

What ends up happening is that I'll spend 16, 18 straight hours in front of the computer and not realize it. That's exactly what happened yesterday -- I started working around 7:30 AM or so and didn't stop until about midnight. It's no one's fault but my own -- no one I work with *expects* me to strap the PowerBook to my face for every waking moment of the day. But I end up doing it, because when you work from home, it's hard to get away from the office.