Does anyone like working at their computer while it’s dark outside? I certainly don’t.

Of course, there are days (nights?) when I must do so despite my preferences.

My husband works from 1:00 pm to 9:30 pm, so my time with him is in the mornings. Thus, I get most of my work done in the afternoons and evenings. The afternoons are the easiest time for me to work (as long as I have my coffee and/or Diet Mountain Dew). Psychologically, the evenings are another story.

In the dark winter months, the skies darken around 5:00 pm (if not before), which means that if I work just before dinner or any time after dinner, I work with blackness outside the window of my home office. Granted, there are vertical blinds on the window (thank Heaven) which I close to minimize this effect, but I am still aware of the pitch darkness outside. I don’t like the dark. In the winter, I have more lights on in my condo at night that I probably need, but that gives me comfort and the peace of mind I need to work effectively.

It doesn’t matter that I live in an area with a lot of light pollution. I know it’s dark, and the eerie hum of the HVAC behind my office wall and loud sucking sound of the noisy vent above my workstation do not help at all.

If I must work in the evening, I prefer to do so in the spring and summer months, when it is light outside then. It is much more comforting. There are a few disadvantages to working in the bright evenings: the noise of kids playing outside, the cars going by whose drivers insist on sharing their music with everybody, the lawnmowers. (Actually, the sound of lawnmowers soothes me. So does the sound of propeller airplanes overhead.)

How about you? Do you prefer to work when it is dark or light outside?

I am extremely grateful to God for being able to be a self-employed editor for many reasons. However, one of the most important reasons is that I can be there for my elderly parents.

If one of them has a crisis, I can drop everything, reschedule it quickly, and drive the hour to where they each live. (My father is in a memory care facility that is located in a different town than my mother’s condo, but which is thankfully only about ten minutes from her home.) I can reschedule work for any time I want, including weekends. (Like most people, I do not particularly like working on weekends, but I will do so to meet a deadline.)

For example, this past October, my mother was a victim of credit card fraud. When she told me about it, I quickly cleared the next day of work. This required quick but careful thinking. This task could be done the day after tomorrow, that task could be done Monday, et cetera. Prioritizing was key. I was able to travel to my mother’s place the next day to help her deal with the phone calls that come with being a fraud victim. (Shame on whoever did that to her, by the way.)

One thing to always remember is that family comes first. In August 2023, I was scheduled to leave for the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) conference in Alexandria, Virginia on a Thursday. The previous Tuesday, my father suffered a severe fall. After checking in on my parents, I said to my husband, “If I have to miss the conference to help them out and lose [X] dollars, I will. Family comes first.” He agreed without hesitation. It turned out that everything was taken care of that Tuesday and my father was all right (thank God) and so I was able to attend to the conference later that week after all.

A traditional job would not afford me such flexibility. Sadly, I know a woman who worked in a lab at a research university that I had worked in before. She was fired for spending “too much” time caring for her ailing mother while she was working there, and not enough time in the lab. Talk about kicking someone while they are down.

If you are self-employed, how do you manage your schedule? I am especially interested to hear your answer if you have children.