A date with Sarah-Kate; Kate’s home truths

Self-starter Sarah-Kate makes a break for it

Iknow a lot of people dream of working from home, but as someone who has done so for many years, I often dream of working in an office. There are a lot of reasons for this, one being that I don’t get a Christmas party, and the other being that there’s only me and the dog to do a Melbourne Cup sweepstake. (On the plus side, I always get first, second and third prizes as Ted is a terrible picker.)

More of an issue is the guilt factor. For the people who don’t suffer from it, I would recommend a home office most enthusiastically. For the people who do – from the moment you get up till the moment you go to bed, you’re wracked with guilt if you’re not at your desk.

I made the stupid mistake when we built our house 10 years ago of putting my office in our bedroom. At the time, there was a very good reason for this, which I have now completely forgotten.

It means that the first thing I see when I wake up, other than the Ginger, is my computer, staring blankly at me with its big, dumb, empty face reminding me of all the things I didn’t do the day before.

For this reason, I’m quite often at my desk within minutes of waking up and am sometimes still there at lunchtime, in my pyjamas, without having cleaned my teeth. (Note to self: Next time you build house, put office in bathroom.)

I mean, it’s very good for getting work done if all you care about is work, which I definitely do not. I love what I do, but I don’t want to be doing it from sunup till sundown. Not for me the buzz of being busy.

I think busy-ness is a sign you’re not walking on the beach enough and watching too little telly. But sometimes when I go to the wardrobe to get my walking clothes, there it is, that big old box of bolts, glaring out at me with its dead, black screen and before I know it, I’m back at work.

Usually, though, I’m clever enough to give it the slip, even if I have a deluge of deadlines, to walk the dog. Take that, Apple Mac! But in the recent other deluges, of actual rain, this has been impossible.

At one stage, I did not leave the house for three days. I got up, I worked, I went to bed and I got up again. My step count one day was 137.

“It sounds like being in prison,” my sister said when I rang her for a moan.

“In prison, I’d have someone to talk to and they’d bring me lunch,” I replied.

But then the sun came out. Sure, it was only for 45 minutes, but I spent all of them walking on the beach, and a few more being hailed on and getting some free dermabrasion from the sand.

Still, just like that, my blues flew away, and suddenly working in my jammies with bed hair and bad breath seemed like the biggest luxury a girl could afford.