On May 6th, it will be my ninth month working as home-based web developer, web designer, technical support engineer, and system administrator for people from North America and Europe. I was surprised that I was able to last this long without losing much my enthusiasm on my field of work. Perhaps I already loved the people whom I interacted with everyday and they are now significant part of my life, despite the fact that I don’t see their faces often and we are divided by great distance. The Philippines is like 12 hours ahead from America’s Eastern Standard Time (EST) – meaning to say, I am nearly in the opposite side of the earth from the people I worked for.

Today, I reevaluated my workplace to see if things have changed in the course of nine months. I’ve been like a couch potato sitting in my chair all day long and working all the time – yet I was very productive – so no regrets at all. Work alone was not a problem at all since my skills tend to suffice the needs of my employer and I was quite fast adapting the business-work environment they embraced to me.

Last January, I showed my workplace in one of my blog posts. It was revealed there my real office situation at that time. Now, I want to show where I work now. There is not much difference but at least few things improved. I got a new chair, LCD monitor and new sound system – things that helped sustain my energy and zeal throughout the day of work.

To let you know, I have a daily work routine. I usually start my day by waking up around 9AM to 10AM. After taking a quick breakfast and doing my personal preparations, I immediately “assemble” my office in our veranda. My office table is there all the time so what I do is bring my laptop outside, my LCD monitor, audio-voltage regulator (AVR), my infamous electric fan, my sound system and my office chair. After they are all set, my day of work begins. The air temperature in my workplace during the day ranges from 28C to 34C.

My workplace is really unique for my Web-inclined profession. There are few things that are not common in a usual office scenario. While sitting in a corner during the day, several creatures catch my attention and give me little entertainment. One time, there was a stray kitten suddenly jumped on my lap while I was working and slept on it. Then I saw our neighbor’s dog chasing our ducks and chickens. Plus, I have an officemate in a soul of a black-capped lory.

I stay outside working until 6PM to 7PM (sometimes up to 9PM), then I start packing and disassembling my office and move things back inside the house. There, I assemble them again for my next phase of work that commences around 7PM and ends up to 3AM (sometimes up to 5AM).

As you can see, I’m pretty a hardworking person. I work nearly 18 hours a day (more than twice the number of hours of work in a real office environment). But see, I have no regrets whatsoever; bloggers and web developers like me do this for good. And we do it like this for now because we strongly believe that our hard work will lead us to somewhere else in the future.

And we do it like this for now because we strongly believe that our hard work will lead us to somewhere else in the future.

Working alone was the most challenging of all, but my love and zeal to change pushed me further and let me feel like not working at all.