Expectations
When it comes to starting this career, working from home is not the goal. At least, it hasn’t been for me. I like to get out into the world and meet with people. I like going to my other job, interacting with peers and students. Can you do this from home? Sure, but if that’s your goal, this is not going to be rewarding work.
Realities
You might have a thousand reasons to want to work from home, all of them legitimate. But if you are after exclusively working from your home office, this isn’t necessarily the best fit. Unless you are willing to work for another company, completely remote, it is difficult to make the connections necessary to keep your business thriving if you never leave you living room or change out of your pajamas. Again, nothing against that lifestyle, and if that’s what you want, there are routes to make that work. There is no substitution for leg work if you are self-employed.
You will spend a lot of time in your home office, don’t get me wrong. You can work quite comfortably there for a good sixty percent of the time. The remaining forty percent, however, you need to invest back into networking and making connections. That means going outside and visiting with clients, drumming up new business, or just being out and visible in the community. If you chose to live in isolation these connections are a lot harder to make.
Yes, the past couple of years has certainly made digital connections a lot easier. Meeting with people online is sometimes preferrable to in-person. It also helps with our overall outreach as we don’t have to solely focus on local business for our work. But writing is about having experiences and, again, those are often difficult to come by at home in lounge wear.
Conclusion
Working from home is not the goal, we should be focused on learning to work from anywhere. This allows us the freedom to explore the world, to have those experiences that will feed our creativity, as well as making the writing we do more engaging.