Work-Life Balance

I'm still trying to figure out an appropriate work-life balance for working at home. People ask me if I'm tempted to goof off or do housework, since I'm home all day, rather than work. Actually, I have the opposite problem: I don't know when to stop working.

I want to show my editors that they can rely on me to work pretty much unsupervised at home, which means I feel like I have to cram 10 hours into an eight-hour day to show how hard I'm working. Of course, there's also the fact that I'm still getting used to a new job, so work that I should be able to finish in eight hours is taking me 10 hours. Not every day, but a lot of days. More than I'd like.

I keep telling myself that eventually I'll get into a groove where I have a good understanding of the science involved in my news reporting. And I won't have to keep second-guessing what I'm putting into stories, because I'll have figured out what my editors are most interested in. Only time will tell.

So, my own just-for-fun, maybe-someday-to-be-published fiction writing has suffered. A lot. By the time I finish my work day, I'm not terribly interested in spending even more time in front of the computer. My poor butt is already flat enough. But what do I do instead? I sit on the couch and read. Excuses, excuses.