It’s 11:36 AM, and I’m sitting in the front seat of my truck, some 30 yards from the white frothy waves of the Atlantic Ocean on Ocracoke Island, in the Outer Banks. I’m watching two things concurrently with disproportionate interest levels. The first is my array of three surfcasting rods, held by sand anchors with tensioned baited lines extended out past the sandbar. The second is my super-duper gaming laptop connected to the mainland’s 4G Verizon tower. The signal—amplified by my roof-mounted weBoost antenna—connects me and my GoToWebinar account to some 30 people around the world. They’re listening to me explain how my day-trading software functions in my weekly online demonstration. “How does the software work with cryptocurrency?” William from London types into the chat room. I hesitate in answering. The middle fishing pole might be bump-bump-bumping from an as-yet-unidentified, bait-stealing, potential dinner filet.
I need William and the other customers gathered virtually with me today, as they keep the lights on. Mortgages and all that. But today, I’m a technological Icarus, perhaps flying a tad too close to the Sun. I’ve been working “from home” for years now, each day pushing farther away from “home.” I want to see if the Instagram influencers have been truthful about what’s possible in their #bestlife posts.
“It works pretty well, actually, William. Here, take a look at this example,” I reply back into the Bluetooth headset while watching the now-flexing third pole to the right of my truck’s bumper. From the size of the bend, it’s most likely a 24- to 30-inch fish. Will’s asking how he can purchase the software as the line screams from the reel.
Now my phone vibrates: It’s my wife, wanting to know if I’ll be back at the house for lunch with the family on time.
Wife, fish, potential order: Do I ‘eeenie-meenie’ it? The four bars of 4G on an island at the edge of the Atlantic made these choices possible. Sure, I don’t like the pressure of having to choose, of William having access to me here or not being 100% present in any one activity. If the signal was weak, I’d at least have an excuse to step outside the truck. But if the signal was weak, I’d also be 300 miles away in an attic office—only staring at pictures of fish while William asked me for purchase links.
Why I Went (Really) Remote
Fifteen years ago, I was sitting in the bonus room above my not-so-greatly-insulated garage. It was winter, and I was surrounded by a sleeping bag cocoon pulled up to my armpits in front of my not-so-super-duper laptop on a Walmart folding table.
Months earlier, I’d watched (and re-watched) Mike Judge’s cult-following film Office Space. If I was being totally honest, I’d maybe watched it a few dozen times more. I had even set Microsoft Outlook to play a clip whenever I received an email, where the main character, Peter Gibbons, tells his Innotech friend, Michael, “Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day.”
A child of the eighties, I’d watched a lot of movies in my lifetime. Blockbuster had been my babysitter. I’d received more red-and-white Netflix DVD envelopes than most people could imagine. But a rare handful had ever affected me as much as Office Space had, where I’d walked into my boss’s office in New York and told him we had just bought a home next to a farm in North Carolina, and that I could work for him remotely if he wanted—brazenly stating that we both knew I’d have no problems finding another job there. I gave him a few weeks to get back to me with his answer and walked out. Peter Gibbons incarnate.
Surprisingly, he agreed to the new arrangement. And over the next year, I worked in the closet of my newborn’s bedroom through a Spectrum cable internet connection. It had an HVAC duct in there, with my chair and desk just fitting in the four-by-six-foot space filled with hanging onesies. I blew out every sales record the company had in my first work-from-home year. I designed more machinery in my CAD program sitting next to the Huggies boxes than I’d ever accomplished working in a nine-to-five office. I’d solved more customer issues over a Skype call hooked to a Logitech webcam than I’d ever resolved after all the red-eye flights to California.
