Get those damned kids out of here, I’m trying to write!

Posted by stuart as , , ,

There’s an excellent article over at the Business Opportunities Weblog (found via problogger) about working at home, and how to be productive.

I consider myself to be a strange creature (and so does Mrs. PimpMyPageRank!), somewhere between a SAHD (Stay At Home Dad) and a WAHD (Work At Home Dad), definitely more on the SAHD at this stage, but working towards the WAHD thing.

I’m working hard to get my income from my online ventures up, as Mrs. PimpMyPageRank has me under strict instructions to “Go get a damned job” when I’ve had my (long awaited) kidney transplant.

I have my PC in the loungeroom, at the back of the room. I have it there for a couple of reasons. Since we got our broadband connection, the PC seems to have become the centre (that’s right, it’s spelled centre!) of the household, the 3 year old can play on it where we can keep an eye on him, I can write without leaving the family, and Mrs. PimpMyPageRank can buy other people’s crap on ebay.

This is obviously not an ideal situation, but I don’t really want to move the PC, so what do I do? I have a laptop (well, sort of, it’s a Mac Powerbook G3 with 256Mb of RAM, which I was silly enough to install OSX on, this renders it virtually unusable, not to mention the flakey wireless connectivity I get using one of those dodgy Belkin USB thingies).

So I think I need to buy a new laptop, a PC one, so I can go anywhere in the house and work. So I get out my pen and paper, and start doing some sums: I’ve finally cleaned out my AdSense account - around $200, I just got a $500 payment for a site I put together for a friend a couple of years ago (that was a nice surprise), and I’m about to be paid another $500 for the whole podcast blog site thingy that I’m working on. So I’ve got $1200 to buy a laptop. (Lucky I don’t play games!) Off to dell.com.au we go!

Anyway, I digress. What’s the biggest impediment to me putting my head down and working on my online projects? Unfortunately, it’s the fact that I don’t make much money. If I just had one good month (over $400), Mrs. PimpMyPageRank’s ears would prick up, and when I said “can you sort out the rugrats, I’m working?”, she might actually do it, instead of scoff at me and say something along the lines of “working or playing?”