A day in the life of a telecommuter...

A day in the life of a fellow telecommuter, a vignette of home life intersecting with work life. Join Steph, a full-time freelance writer, for a candid account of a typical work day. I found Steph through her blog .Freelancedom*, and loved her humorous account of life in her home office.

7:30 a.m. Alarm goes off. I hit snooze and stare at the ceiling.

7:37 a.m. Alarm goes off again. I continue to stare at the ceiling as classical music pulses from the clock radio. Cat #1 strolls onto my chest and lies down, his big head in my face. Cat #2 stares mournfully at me from the dresser at the foot of the bed. The kitten walks over and lies on my neck. I consider this a good excuse for not moving.

7:46 a.m. I twist around and turn off the clock. The cats walk off in a huff. I swing my legs over the edge of the bed, slide into my flip-flops, and curse the day.

7:47 a.m. I take a piss, brush my teeth, and swish some ACT around in my mouth. All of this is done in a state of miserable semi-consciousness, as is the act of feeding the cats. When I eventually lumber over to my computer, it is 7:56.

7:57 a.m. I go through the e-mails that have piled up during the night, read through missed tweets, and scan through my Google Reader. Aside from my usual favorite reads — most prominent among them Gawker, Jezebel, ProBlogger, and Freelance Switch — I am subscribed to innumerable product and design blogs, and I look through these to find things to post about on Modern Materialist, where I am lead blogger. Doing my daily allotment of posts (an average of five a day) sometimes stretches through the morning. I make sure to at least post a Quick Tip of the Day before attending to breakfast (coffee).

9:47 a.m. There comes a time in my blogging when sheer necessity isn’t enough to keep me going. The quick breaks I take to scan through my Google Reader, catch up on Twitter, and play Spider Solitaire become more and more frequent. Time to shower and get dressed. There’s nothing like the pretense of heading out to work to make you feel motivated and alert.

10:21 a.m. Trying out Kaboodle Styleboards today, as a means of building design-related collages for the Modern Materialist. Last week, I tried Polyvore and ShopStyle. Polyvore is great, except that the photos I tried clipping from other product sites ended up looking horrendous. ShopStyle is an awesome site but, for some reason, the widget I tried to embed onto MM didn’t show up. ::sigh::

12:03 p.m. Now that I’m done with my Modern Materialist posts for the day, I allow myself a small break. Perhaps some lunch + a reality TV fix? (What Not To Wear is on! Score!) I also check the mail and do a happy dance when I see I’ve received a paycheck in the mail. I go into my Freshbooks account and update the status of my invoices.

12:34 p.m. Break over! I sit back down at my computer to write that day’s Freelancedom post. Inspired by my recent spate of published clips and new assignments, I decide to do up a post on web portfolio sites.

3:30 p.m. Mission (finally) accomplished, no thanks to a persnickety wireless Internet connection. Time to catch up on e-mails, some dating from last week, when I was somewhat distracted by Dia de los Muertos party-planning.

4:40 p.m. I freak out because my Dating Advice From…Engineers piece for Nerve.com is due in two days, and I’ve been unable to find a single female engineer willing to participate. Time for me to make a last-ditch effort? Or should I concentrate on doing up the sex party piece I was assigned by The Frisky, also due in two days? It looks like my work day is far from over…Thank god there are so many leftovers from Saturday’s potluck party! I don’t have to worry about cooking.

5:33 p.m. I post a query on the MediaBistro bulletin boards, and also do blog searches through Google and Technorati. I e-mail two female engineers. I have my fingers crossed that one of them will be interested in helping me out. It’s time for my daily scan through the online job ads. I typically check Ed2010 and MediaBistro.

6 p.m. I never make it to my piece for The Frisky. My husband comes home, and all I can think about is dinner and relaxation. I read a bit of Tom Perrotta’s Little Children, and then we heat up some leftovers from our party and settle in for our regular Monday night shows — Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother.

9:06 p.m. I prepare to settle in to bed with Little Children. Plans for tomorrow: wake up early to vote; get my blogging done as quick as I can; clinch that female engineer; do up my Frisky piece. Then I’ll have the whole evening ahead of me for Comedy Central’s election night coverage (I heart you Stephen Colbert!).

Thanks Steph for sharing with us. You're so much more experienced than I am, and I love all of the resources you shared. I for one had forgotten all about Ed2010, I used it years ago.

Want to share your day, and of course promote your work? E-mail teletwenties@gmail.com.