This is the fundamental, obvious, and inevitable problem with working from home:
Much of the day, you are home alone. And not in the Macaulay Culkin, run-wild-in-the-house-while foiling-the-nefarious-plots-of-inept-burglars sense, either.
It’s just you. Alone.

On good days you have interesting work to do, replete with urgent deadlines. Then, one morning you wake up, go to the computer—because you’re a writer, this your natural habitat—and realize…you have no assignment at the moment.

Still, at the computer you sit. Here at least you can interact with your multiple emails, check your dwindling checking-account balance, and make sure your 300 Facebook “friends” still love their spouses, think their kids are hilarious, or are outraged about some political issue or another.
(If you asked a friend of mine, he’d throw in another, um, mindless way he kills time on the Internet, but in this forum it’s probably best left to the imagination.)

You are a little disturbed by these banal habits, but what else are you going to do? The laundry? Come on. You are a professional.

A reverend at my church recently spoke to this, and I quote:
“We hover over our email and Facebook accounts, battering our souls against the computer screen like agitated moths ricocheting off the window on a summer night.” This is disturbing, because (a) either the all-seeing God has ratted me out or (b) this pastor is spying on me. (Not to mention the irksome possibility that the reverend may be a better writer than I am.)

But, back to my procrastinational habits.
My computer addiction recently took a turn for the scarier. It began with a seemingly innocuous website my children were playing on—ClubPenguin.com. If you’re not a parent, this is the premise: kids create virtual alter egos in the form of penguins. And not just cute penguins—greedy penguins.

They want large, well-appointed igloos. They want fancy outfits. They want gear: fishing rods, kites, snorkels, you name it. They also want pets. And then the pets want stuff of their own.

Maintaining this lifestyle requires playing Club Penguin games to earn coins. A lot of games—more than my children can manage in their allotted computer time. Which is where I come in.

I recently started killing time playing games myself to supplement their income—catching fish, surfing, attempting to make pizzas very quickly and entering penguin dance contests.
Some of these activities can rack up a lot of gold, especially if you happen to be an adult and have a natural advantage over your average four-year-old. (Note that I did not say average eight-year-old: he usually kicks my butt.)

So I play game after game, and suddenly I’m not just a Professional who works from home—I’m also SuperMom!

When I step back and think about it, I’m embarrassed to be spending my time playing children’s games centered around flightless birds that speak English and wear clothes.

But I don’t pretend to have the answer. After all, I’m just an agitated moth, ricocheting off the window in the night. Or in the morning or afternoon, as it were. (Do moths ricochet during daylight hours?)

Oh please, I need a deadline!