Today at work I got an iPad and a bottle of wine. The iPad is for me to keep, not a property of work, and the wine, well yes. That’s for me to drink.We knew the iPads were coming. It was an overly generous gift from our division. A pleasant reward for meeting every one of our year end goals. 16GB wi-fi only. But hey, an iPad is an iPad! No complaints here. The wine, a little holiday gift from our PR team.

After 9 days of vacation, I was absolutely, 100% dreading my return to the office today. But what do you know? Today wasn’t too shabby afterall.

I swear my life would be 10,000 times better if I could work from home more frequently.  I love my job, and my coworkers. We even have a brand new, extremely modern office that makes work feel more like an NYC ad agency than an educational publishing company founded during the industrial revolution (no, seriously… my company that old).  Plus, our office is located in the heart of Boston. Directly across from Copley Square.  Two blocks from Boston Common.  We can exit the building onto Newbury St and have incredible views of the Charles River, Cambridge, the Common and downtown Boston.

So why in the world would I want to work from home? Because there is absolutely nothing more pleasant than leisurely waking up, brewing as many cups of fresh coffee as I want without feeling rushed to get out the door, signing online for the day with the Today Show still playing in the background, and scrambling eggs to add to a guacamole, salsa and cheese breakfast burrito.

Nothing, is more pleasant than sitting at my kitchen table, plugged into work wearing in sweatpants, feeling the warmth of the morning sun as it pours through my windows.

The new apartment is coming along somewhat nicely. You’ve heard it all.  The good and bad.  But don’t get me wrong.

Our unit is awesome.  It’s massive, it gets a ton of natural light and it has more storage than I’ve ever had in Boston.  But one of the best perks of the place is my new, shortened commute.  On some days, I get to work in 12 minutes.  Door-to-door.  12 minutes.

Even better, we’re located right between two different train lines, so on the way home from work I can hop on either the Green Line C or Green Line D train, whichever comes first.

It’s easy to dream about a job that allows you to work from the comforts of your own home, but when push comes to shove, working productively while working from home can actually be more difficult than you think.  Just imagine, your comfy couch, lounging in sweats, sweets and snacks all day, and your favorite TV shows streaming just beyond your laptop.  Perfect, right?  Wrong.

Home office photos found here and here.

It’s all too easy to send a mass email to your group, Subject: WFH, and then slack off the rest of the day, so here to help you are my tried and true, must follow tips for being productive while working from home.

1. Get out of bed. I know it sounds rudimentary, but seriously.  Go on.  Get up.  Get yourself out of bed.  I know your bed is comfy, cozy and warm, but it’s all too easy to forget that you’re actually supposed to be working when you doze off to dream every other 5 minutes.

2. Shower. Again.  You’re thinking, come on, right?  Well think again.  Showering not only wakes you up and gets your blood flowing, but it makes you believe that it’s time to start doing… something.  And today, that something is going to be work!  So wash away those eye crusts (gross, gross, and gross) and soak in the hot water.  It’s time to go to work, kind of.

3. Get dressed and look presentable. Yes you are likely going to sit at home all day by yourself and not physically meet with anyone except maybe the mailman who, presumably, has seen you looking much, much worse than your morning bedhead.  But in today’s day and age, working from home does not mean working alone.  Especially with modern companies, iChat, Google Video Chat and Skype are all too common in the workplace to think that working from home means it’s okay to lounge in sweats and your boyfriend’s oversized tshirt all day.  Not only will getting dressed and looking semi presentable (I’m not suggesting you dress to the nines) save you from an impromptu Skype call with the president, but dressy casually also melts your mind into a lax mode that is not going to benefit you when it comes time to crunch numbers and get things done.

4. Set up shop. For the same reason’s that I suggest in tip 1 to Get out of Bed, it’s important that you create a workspace that actually welcomes productivity, not a place that hinders it (eh hem.. like the couch).  When a blizzard has me working from home, I clear off our apartment’s island and gather all of my work day’s essentials:  laptop, power cord, cell phone, cell phone charger, sticky notes, a pen, my papers and a glass of water.  Grabbing all of your work essentials first thing in the morning makes it easier to sit in one place for almost 8 hours (how do we do that in the office?!), and it weakens your excuses as to why you want to get up and wander around the apartment, 5, 10, 20 times a workday.  Also, my couch is comfortable.  I love my couch.  But slouching on the couch with computer on lap will hardly win your home office an ergonomic award, and please, revisit Tip 1.  Snoozing and drifting into slumbers does not help productivity levels!  There’s a reason nap time stopped in kindergarten folks!  My island’s stools make me sit up straight and stay attentive to my work; my back is to the living room and TV, so even if I wanted to watch my favorite day time soaps, it would be hard to do. Capice? Capicú.

5. And finally, stick to a schedule. As I’ve referenced in Tips 1-4, it’s easy to snooze, to snack, to watch last night’s episode of Glee, to run some errands that you’ve put off for months now.  But the point is, you’re working from home, you’re not on vacation.  You have a boss, and a team that are depending on you to be productive and to execute the same way that you do while sitting in your cube.  Follow the same schedule that you do while in the office.  Do you always spend 30 minutes catching up on emails in the morning?  Do the same from home.  Do you always check in on your intern’s progress right before lunch?  Do teh same from home.  Pick a time for lunch.  Shut down shop and eat lunch for 30-60 minutes.  Then return to business.  Whatever your routine may be, try to stick to it as closely as possible while working from home, to remind yourself that today is in fact a work day.

So there they are – my top 5, tried and true tips on how to work productively while working from home.  I never promised they’d be ground breaking or innovative, did I?  No.  But I do promise that they will help you start your day strong, stay on track and keep focused throughout the work day.

The debate has begun.  Do BF and I move from the big city of Boston to our hometown of Portland?  Or does BF move to hometown while I stay in Boston? (Nooo!)  Do we both stay in Boston for the indefinite future and wait until we’re married with kids to move to Portland?  These are the questions that are now officially consuming my life.

Since BF and I met, and subsequently became serious, we’ve agreed that we want to raise our family in the Greater Portland area.  The ocean, the islands,  museums, cafes, art galleries, restaurants, farmers markets, public parks, the schools, the sports community.  My admiration of Portland, and Maine in general is unbounded.  Seriously.

So why then, do I buy into the stigma of “moving home”?  At what point in one’s life does “moving home” no longer mean failing, giving up on bigger and better things?  Why will my friends fail to believe that bigger and better things for me may actually be in Portland?   And most importantly, why am I letting that influence my decision?

My desire to move home, and to move home so suddenly, is going to shock most anyone that I tell.  But the move really just makes sense.  I’m starting to realize that there is nothing holding me close to Boston.  There really is no reason why I choose to renew my lease each year, or why I chose not to travel elsewhere after college.  The only thing I can come up with is that it’s ‘comfortable.’  And to be frank, it’s just easier to stay put than to relocate.

But moving home will be even more ‘comfortable,’ right?   On one hand, yes, it might be.  But I’ve been gone 6 years now and although I know the bars like the back of my hand, I haven’t lived in Portland as an adult.   I haven’t made a life there for myself since I was in high school.  I want to join a kickball league and go to a happy hour at RiRa’s and meet a friend on Commerical St. for lunch.  And even though I could do these sorts of things in Boston, the point is that I don’t.  I haven’t, and probably will continue not to do so.  Am I just lazy?  Broke?  Or friendless?  I want to say none of the above.  There’s just something about living here that is so exhausting in itself, that it’s all I do.  I work, go home, eat, sleep, repeat.  On the weekends I go out.   And when I do make ‘fun’ plans, they all originate from Portland.  And that means I have to drive 2 hours north first.  In the summers I want to go to the islands or go to the lake without having to drive two hours first.  And in the winters I want Sugarloaf to be 2 hours away, not 4.

There’s something to be said for making a life of your own.  And while I fully respect people that successfully and happily do this in a new and unfamiliar place, who’s to say I can’t do it just as successfully and just as happily in the same town that I was raised?

I should mention that all of this is dependent on a job.  BF and I are beginning to talk to a few people, scope out the work scene up there, and I will not move home – unless I have a job.  That being said, if I were to get an offer in Portland tomorrow – I can’t say I’d move.  How am I going to figure this out?

Grande skinny vanilla latte in hand, the Today show playing on flat screen in front of me, snow covered trees outside my window. Yes folks, another day to myself. Another day with no work. Boyfriend and I woke up early and easily this morning. The perks of going to bed at a reasonable hour. We walked outside together, kissed goodbye, he went on his way to catch the train, I drove off to get my morning latte and newspaper.

Today I will:

• complete the crossword in the Metro
• pack for boyfriend & my weekend in Maine
• vacuum the apartment
• take a little trip to NJC and take advantage of their wicked sale
• yup, I think that’s it for my day!

Oh yea, after 5pm I will pick up Boyfriend from work and we’ll make the 2 hour drive north to Portland.  Meet his family out to dinner to celebrate Boyfriend’s 25th, Boyfriend’s brother’s 27th and Boyfriend’s father’s who knows what.  After triple birthday dinner we will enjoy an inexpensive night of drinking and friends at well, a friends house.

Successful, productive day at work.  The only thing better than walking out of my office building on a Friday afternoon, is walking out of my office building on a Friday afternoon knowing that I spent the day taking names and kicking ass.  Eh, well I was crossing things off my to-do list?  That counts right?  I even started my Friday super early at 8am.  And due to our Executive Committee meeting, I was dressed to the nines.  (Keep in mind my normal get up for our extremely casual office is jeans, a cardigan and flats.)

Aaah it’s Friday night and I’m feeling good.  Off to see Dear John with my roommates!  Bring on the tears!

Today I finished the one task that has remained on my to do list since October 27, 2009. Yes, that is over 3 full months ago. Yes, I, have put a project off for 3 months. Don’t tell bossman, but I always save this task for the last minute. But completing it, the satisfaction of crossing it off my to to list – that feeling, was glorious.

I decided to come into work today – despite the fact that I have almost a week’s worth of vacation time left, that will go right out the window as of January 1st. Why’d I come into work? Because I have an irrational fear of my 35 year old bossman, that’s why.

But vacation is earned and accumulated for a reason right? And that reason is of course, to take it. Nope. Maybe I’m just that stellar of an employee. Or maybe I’m still afraid of him thinking I’m a slacker.

It’s almost noon and I haven’t had a damn coffee yet. My goodness. Off I go (with my fully loaded Starbucks card, thanks Auntie!).

Did I mention I’m the only one in the office today? Yea, the entire office is on vacation.