This book is about the American Dream, and more. It is about the dream that you have secretly held onto, waiting for the right opportunity. It is about making the decision to go down the other path--the one that is yours alone. It is about taking stock of all your education, training and experience and realizing that it's time to live your life--your way and on your terms.
In our professional careers, both of the authors of this book have been commuters on trains, subways, highways, and airplanes. We know about standing on train platforms in sub-zero temperatures, and wondering how a minute could take so unbelievably long. We have fought our way on to overcrowded subway cars in sweltering heat and felt way too close to the person next to us. We've sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic with the gas gauge near empty and with no way to call in late for work.
What makes us so special? Nothing at all. We work, run a household, and raise kids just like everybody else. There is one exception--we do it all from home. We're living our lives--on site. Gone are the crazy commute and long hours away from our loved ones, pets, and home. These days our commute takes all of 60 seconds, the time it takes to walk from one room into another. Do we still work hard? Sometimes it feels as if we've never worked harder. Would we trade it all in and head back into the office? No chance.
Change can be unnerving. Change means traveling down an unchartered course, destination unknown. Remaining where you are and doing what you have always done means that at least you know where you are and what you can expect--more of the same. But if you're holding this book in your hands, you are thinking about change. You're thinking about expanding your life out to all its proportions and exciting possibilities.
Here are the authors' two stories of giving up the rat race for a commute from bedroom to desk—in about 60 seconds flat.
About Erica
No one told me that if I became a writer and book editor that one day it would be a lucrative way to make money working from home. In fact, though it would take a team of wild horses to get me to reveal my age (and I'd lie anyway), back when I graduated from college, no one worked from home. You just never heard about it. There was no e-mail. Faxes were a modern new invention, but other than freelance artists or the struggling novelist, no one had a home office. We all accepted that the daily grind was part of work. The idea that someone could wake up, put on a pot of coffee in his or her apartment or house, and walk in a bathrobe over to a desk with all the latest technology, and actually earn a living at it, was crazy. Unheard of.
I took a job in the publishing world and worked in an office, under ugly lights, overheated in winter in New York, and under-air-conditioned in summer swelter. By the time I had my first child, an opportunity came along for me to write articles for a newspaper freelance—from home. Technology had changed. Get paid to write from home, now we were talking. This was something I could really get used to. I don't think I've ever looked back.
For me, it was always about my kids. I didn't need a corner office and a plaque on my door to tell me who I was. My family will tell you I was weird (I prefer eccentric) all along—even as a kid. Maybe it was only natural that once I figured out that a 60-second commute was a possibility, I jumped at the chance. I never could make it to the office at nine o'clock anyway. I was always the woman putting on her pantyhose in her car on the freeway, stuck in traffic. The one putting her mascara on using the rearview mirror. Yeah, that was me.
