The Wayback Machine
I have been working remote since before remote working even really got its name – at least not in the mainstream. I quickly realized after graduating college that the 8-5 M-F thing was a huge drag on my brain’s ability to be productive. I got to know my office, built up their trust in my skills and managed to get them to set me up with a laptop and a VPN so I could work from home two days a week. I also traveled for work nearly every week, so all-in-all I was probably only in the office on average 10 days a month. This worked well for everyone; I kept up my productivity, built my skills up in managing projects on my own from wherever I happened to be and continued my evolution as an early adopter of the remote work movement.
There were plenty of skeptics, of course. But mostly I just ran into folks who were jealous as I tethered my Blackberry to my laptop and dialed into the VPN and got ready for another day at “the office”. My view was always changing – from Atlanta to Dallas to San Francisco all the way to Toronto, Frankfurt and Qatar. I was doing it. And there was no stopping me. Every turn I took was another cog in the machine I was building for what I envisioned as an eventual full work freedom.
It took years (decades, if you want the real math) and had many bumps and twists and turns, but here I am almost 25 years later and still doing it. There are days it is hard and I curse the sky for not sending a proper signal to my blasted laptop or I just want to launch the machine out the window. But when I look out the window (prior to launch) I often see what amazing places the remote work set-up has allowed me to be – a cotton-candy colored sunrise in Austin or the rippled water of a rocky cove on the Croation Coast, a buffalo walking down the road in Yellowstone or just the lush green forest as we drive through its canopied corridor on the Emerald Coast.
And I remember why I keep doing it. Signal or no signal. Rain or shine. Crazy expensive gas, c*vid masks and flat tires be damned. Power ON.
punkTREKS 