I just finished watching “Glee”.
It was the Madonna episode. Loved it. REALLY loved it. I’m a huge Madonna fan, yep….a kid of the 80′s.
So that made “Glee” especially delicious tonight!
As I watched tonight….I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I could just break out into a Madonna song while sitting here at my computer working at home?
(Yes….damn Kelly….that would be hell-a-cool!)
And yes, of course I could just slap on my iPod and sing some Madonna. I could do it right now, but I’d wake up my kids and husband – and I still need to watch my Tivo’d “Biggest Loser”. Heck, I play guitar….I could do an acoustic version of “Frozen” right now. But – you’re not understanding me. This Radio-TV-Film degree’d, ex-radio DJ wants to do a GLEE version!! I need cast mates and some kind of band or karaoke CD at a minimum!

That’s the sucky part of working at home. There are no cast mates. ::sigh::
Oh sure….LOVE all my “virtual” world friends….my local Twittering friends….my Facebook Buds….but it’s different working at home. You’re alone. A lot. And some might think that sounds magical. One of my friends
thinks I’ve won the lotto of jobs – and, sure…..I do love my work. I love writing this post right now – to you.
But day after day and year after year of no co-workers….even stupid co-workers that you can make fun of….it gets stale.

So…..”workers of the home”….or those that “long for their workplace to be home”…..or….well, whatever…you get what I’m trying to say…

Be warned – working at home can be LONELY!!! Do not totally disconnect from your friends and family when you slink into the world of telecommuting or freelance. Be sure to meet friends for lunch, if your husband can make it home one afternoon a week for lunch…..va va voom….DO IT. Take time to go for walks, to actually spend time with your kids. Because the misconception about working at home is that you’ll have ALL this free time. You won’t. You’ll be driven and focused and almost weird with ambition. Especially if you’re creating your
own business, website, blog, product…..it takes you over like a drug. I speak of what I know.

So…pace yourself. Ease off the coffee (just a little). Get a massage, a pedicure….take a walk. Call your mom, lunch with friends, catch a movie with your hubby, enroll in a yoga class – whatever it takes to keep ONE foot in the REAL world. I promise….you’ll be better off for it.

And hey….while you’re lunching with friends….who knows….they could break out in song. You could join in? Something cool like, “Brass in Pocket” by the Pretenders? Maybe your husband will show up and sing too? Yes…he will sing a romantic song like, “In Your Eyes” by Peter Gabriel….and then the cast from The Breakfast Club will waltz in…..no…no……Madonna will stroll in….

“Come on girls…..do you believe in love? ‘Cuz I got somethin’ to say about…..and goes somethin’ like this….”

Hey….one thing about being a work at home mom…..it’s great for the imagination!

*Not sure where this came from – got it in a forwarded, forwarded, forwarded (you get the idea) email! LOL

If you are 30, or older, you might think this is hilarious!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up ; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning….Up hill… Barefoot…BOTH ways… yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up , there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!

But now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.  You’ve got it so easy!  I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia!
And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have the Internet.  If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email !!  We had to actually write somebody a letter – with a pen!  Then you had to walk all the way across the street and  put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there!  Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn’t care if our parents beat us.  As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to whip us too! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3′s or Napsters or iTunes!  If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shop lift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and mess it all up !  There were no CD players!  We had tape decks in our car.  We’d play our favorite tape and “eject” it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless.  Cause, hey, that’s how we rolled, Baby!  Dig?

We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting!  If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that’s it!

There weren’t any freakin’ cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn’t make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your “friends”. OH MY GOD !!!  Think of the horror… not being in touch with someone 24/7!!!  And then there’s TEXTING.  Yeah, right.  Please!  You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was!  It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent… you just didn’t know!!!  You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn’t have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics!  We had the Atari 2600!  With games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’.  Your screen guy was a little square!  You actually had to use your imagination!!!  And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen… Forever!  And you could never win.  The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died!  Just like LIFE!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing!  You had to get off your fanny and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!!  NO REMOTES!!!  Oh, no, what’s the world coming to?!?!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning.  Do you hear what I’m saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-finks!

And we didn’t have microwaves.  If we wanted to heat something up , we had to use the stove!  Imagine that!

And our parents told us to stay outside and play… all day long.  Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort.  And if you came back inside… you were doing chores!

And car seats – oh, please!  Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on.  If you were luckily, you got the “safety arm” across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling “shot gun” in the first place!

See!  That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled rotten!  You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd