If you follow my twitter feed you know that I’ve recently moved out of my office and back into my home studio. The decision not to renew the lease on my satellite office was based on a couple things:

1) The wife and I are very serious about this move to Seattle and we’re trying to make it real. If we do find a window to move soon, I don’t want to be stuck in the middle of an office lease.
2) Working from home saves money. That’s seems a prudent decision considering the cost of the move, not to mention the difference between Seattle and Dallas in cost of living. Plus, in “these troubled times” it’s probably smarter to save the cash.

I thought it would be a bit sad moving out, but it wasn’t. I’ve worked there for two years now. Kris and my brother helped me move this weekend. We took down our giant vinyl decorations of Skull and Vanderbeam off the walls. Kris ripped right through Vanderbeam and he let me help do it. It was oddly cathartic. I wanted to rip down Skull but my brother refused to let me. He carefully rolled it up to take to his office.

This will mean I have to make some adjustments about how I work to ensure that I don’t fall back into bad habits. When you work from home, it’s very easy to fall into a rut where your work life and your home life blend into each other until they are no longer separate.

I think the key will be to make sure I’m getting up early and quitting at 5pm. Also, for some reason, it doesn’t feel like I’ve started my day for real unless I got up, showered and got dressed as if I was going out. I’m not a work in my pajamas kind of guy. When I start doing THAT you know my productivity has fallen into the crapper.

I must also resist the temptation to go BACK to work after the rest of the house has gone to sleep. It’s great to work when the house is quiet, and the temptation to finish one more project from 11pm to 2am is strong. However staying up late leads to sleeping in late, which leads to work not being done at 5pm, which leads to your work life and home life bleeding into each other again. If I want that “quiet house in the dark” feeling, better to get up at 5am and get to work.

Of course, this weekend we move my office setup back home, and we lose internet at the house. And of course, we’ve already shut off internet at the office. So I’m tying this from a Starbucks near the house. I’m trying not to take this as a bad omen.

Wish me luck everyone!