There ya go.

So true! Listen, Rick. You already had the answer inside of you. Stop for a second and listen to yourself before you start listening to the rest of us. You know your situation best. You have the best answer for it. We can sit here and tell you all we want but you are gonna do what you want in the end anyway. Good luck and keep us in the loop. I sincerely believe we all learn from each other. :)

I think it might be a bit more difficult to compartmentalize in your situation. Although you say that you really enjoy your job, it seems like you're tethered to it 24/7 and can't permit yourself to completely disengage because of commitments to your customers. While it's a nice option to have, working from home can blur the line between your "real life" and your "work life", making it more difficult to separate the two. Although I can also work from home, I rarely do. When I'm in the office, it's all about work...when I'm at home, it's MY time and I don't think about my job. Once in a while, if I find myself thinking about some aspect of a work-related project, I'll say to myself, "Shift gears...you're not getting paid to think about that stuff now". The nature of my job (engineering) allows for a complete break between work and my personal life. In sales, it's different. One never wants to miss an opportunity to close a deal...even if it means taking calls or answering e-mails in the middle of the night, or even while on vacation.
As others have said, maybe it's time to move on. If you really want more separation from work in your personal life, you might consider looking for something that requires you to spend some time in a dedicated workplace instead of only working from home. Although I like my job and the company I work for, when I leave the office in the afternoon, I can completely tune out work before the door even clicks shut.

Thanks guys. I guess the short version of all this is that I need to find a way to stop worrying, at least when I'm not supposed to be working. I was soooo dreading starting work this morning and just got off a somewhat difficult conf. call on which I had to present and defend some stuff. But it wasn't so bad and, frankly, it's almost never as bad as the worrying or expecations. The work duties I can deal with. I expect to get hammered by phone and email all day today and am fine with it. The issue is being able to forget it all after about 5pm and keep it forgotten until 8am tomorrow. What is the secret to being able to totally shut off the worries about work outside of work hours?

The fact that I'm typing this at my standing desk/kitchen table in boxer shorts and a t-shirt illustrates my harsh working conditions;). I know it's a good gig, which is why it's so hard to find the next one. I wouldn't be opposed to dressing up and driving to an office each day for the right money. But I haven't found that gig yet either. I do send out a few resumes per week, but the rejection emails sort of take the joy out of feeling like I'm trying to control my own destiny. Maybe my pay requirements are unrealistic, but I wouldn't work anywhere for less. And I always decline to ID my race/ethnicity. Maybe that gets me into the round file.

Timely thread. Don't have answers, but more or less the same issue. I'm self employed, working on starting another business, plus do some resale on the side.

I just got back from my niece's wedding in TX, where I logged 5.5 hours for a client while sitting at my in-law's kitchen table between events.

The sort of work I do just doesn't get finished. For the most part I am doing some work seven days a week. When I do take time off, there's no one doing the work for me. It just piles up so I have twice as much to do once I get home.

I really have mixed emotions. On one hand, I am self employed and work from home. On the other hand I can literally work around the clock and never feel like I'm done.

i JUST now got a phone call for a job interview for a position that really interests me. it is amazing how much BS i just laughed off from my current job. i doubt i'll get the job (not being negative, just realistic), but i am going to give that interview the whole me and not even think about my current job while i am there.

good luck, rick.

You're not serious about finding a new gig - that's why you're getting rejection letters. Not saying if you were committed that you wouldn't get the letters as well, but intention goes a long way.

Really depends on what you want. Do you want the boxers and t-shirt aspect? Is that more important than being challenged in other ways? No right answer - everyone has to figure out what is important to them and then try to make it happen.

In the late 90's I was right where I wanted to be. Or thought I did. I'd spent over a decade of undergrad, grad, postdoc, and was in my dream job - tenure-track faculty at an elite small college. But the world changes and I got more interested in how this new thing call the internet would change learning. I eventually came to a crossroads. I could spend another two years cranking out a few papers, get tenure, then be set. Or I could pursue what I really was now interested in. So early in 2000 I wrote my letter of resignation (giving 6 months notice) without a job to go to. I had some skills in digital stuff (all self-taught) and figured I'd sort it out. I landed at USC as a web developer, then ended up running a digital media research center for 5 years, then there was a power shift at the top and I had to do some dancing again. Managed to land where I am now. These days DoD funding is pretty whack and who knows if I'll have a job come Oct. I've been "living work" and losing sleep on and off for years and while I still haven't figured that out but my sanity clause is music.

Back in '09 I figured I wasn't getting any younger, and one of the only times I'm truly happy is when I'm playing. So I set my sights on playing out as much as possible. 50 gigs in 2010, 130 in 2011. During 2011 I figured it was time to "start over" on my instrument so I started studying instead of just playing. 100+ gigs last year, will be the same this year and that is combined with a daily practice routine and skype lessons with my teacher. Stupid amount of work but I can feel the difference and I'm getting more out of the music, which means I'm getting more out of life.

Figure out what you love and do it. The rest will sort itself out one way or another. Life is short and you're dead a long time...

Seems to me you just freed up some time for Mrs Lee's parents:D

Kidding, of course.

Lot's of very good perspectives already offered...best, Rick.

Damn you!

Mrs. Lee has shelved that idea for a while, as her job isn't going great and she's becoming realistic about the financial cost of hosting her parents for a while. Her job is safe and she likes it. But she's making less than before and that will continue for a while. I think she'd rather have her parents stay in China than have to curtail her compulsive shopping habit.

I don't believe in compartmentalizing when things get really bad at work.

Maybe if you are trapped in a truly passive situation, where you really can't do a thing about the job and you have no hope of getting a different job, then it would make sense to shut down the nerve receptors. But that is seldom the case.

In most jobs, when things are really bad, either it can be fixed by improving our own poor performance, or it can be fixed if our own performance is superior, or it can be fixed by finding another and better job. I've always found the best solution is to put the personal life on hold and go all-out to fix the work problem. A short period of aggressively fixing is preferable to a long period of passively coping, in my view.

In your situation, I'm not clear what is so great about your job other than that you can work in your underwear? Personally, I'd prefer a bigger paycheck . . . okay, that's is oversimplifying things, but anyway I think you should be aggressively searching for a better job.

Yes, I am looking for a better job. And a (much) bigger paycheck would easily offset any new requirement to dress up and commute to an office or do more business travel. I am not a career-focused person. The purpose of my work is to finance my lifestyle. I will not lay on my deathbed wishing I had become a CEO, spent more time at work or taken more client calls. I hope to have no regrets on my deatbed. But if I do, it will be not spending as much time as I could have with Mrs. Lee, hanging with good friends, seeing great things and travelling the world (more than I already do). Work will not enter the picture at all, even if, by some miracle, I am able to retire before I die.

What I like about my job are the great people I work with - co-workers and clients. And this is coming from someone who hates humanity in general;) and feels no need at all to be liked or thanked. Somehow I manage. I get to ride my motorcycle all over the place for business. I've met countless Pelicans on my business travels, done a lot of cool extra-curricular stuff on the company dime. And I'm not poor. So it's a good gig.

But I don't truly believe in my heart that it's possible to fix the hole I'm in with my accounts. And I can't admit this to anyone I work with or I'd be canned. For too many years I have skated by cultivating relationships with major, big spenders (which I consider an accomplishment) and their spend became too large a chunk of my territory revenue. Too many eggs in one basket. Now it's going away and I can't replace that revenue quickly enough. So I'm in a downward spiral.

To make things worse, there is no career path at all for someone in my position at the company. Directors never leave and that's the only job I could be promoted to and remain in sales. Otherwise, my job is the pinnacle position for someone who wants to be in sales and be able to not work in one of the major offices on the east or west coast.

I have a very critical job at work, not stressful just very critical. But, when I walk out the door, its shut out of my mind until the next time I go in. I just think if you have to worry about whats happening at work when your off, something is not right.

When I worked in the DC office, I would leave my Blackberry on my desk when I went to lunch. I never stayed a min. after 5pm and rarely even brought my laptop home with me. I didn't care as much about getting canned in those days, as DC is a pretty easy place to find another job. I've literally been laid off three times and had a better job within days for two of those. It doesn't work that way in AZ, especially if you're making decent money for the AZ economy and working from home.

And I sort of view always being on call as the price I pay for getting to work from home and make my own schedule. I don't mind it most of the time. Usually when my phone rings, it means money is knocking on my door or at least the chance to come out looking like a hero presents itself. It's the internal BS and longterm career prospects that I need to be able to turn off when I'm not working.

I have a call with my boss tomorrow at 8am to discuss my "rescue plan" for my territory and it's gonna be real hard to not think about it tonight, since it will be the first thing I touch for work tomorrow.

It sounds like you're stuck in a lose-lose situation.
Compartmentalized, by your stated position, to fufill an impossible task.

Without breaking some rules of inner-office politics, it will be a difficult situation if-or-when business dries up for the company.
Push to move up and people will be threatened.
Push sideways and people will be threatened.

When I leave the office, I leave the office (kinda hard for your situation, I realize). I used to be an Army recruiter, putting in 16-18 hours a day, at least 6 days a week, and then stressing out about the next day/rest of the month when I was at home. This was hell, and ruined home life pretty damn good. After that, I vowed to never let work bother my personal life again. So, I put in an honest day's work, and then I leave. I'm fortunate in that what I do CANNOT be done from my home (government stuff), so even if I get an email/phone call during the evening, there's nothing I can do about it till the next day.

I'm assuming you have an office set up in your home. I think it might be wise to put in your "time" for the day, and then lock that door. Stop answering emails in the wee hours of the night. If you want to learn to compartmentalize, the first thing to do is truly separate your work life from your home life. Is what you do so important that they need an answer at 1am, or can it wait till 7 or 8?

Rick, this may sound obvious, but I don't believe I've seen a post on this suggestion: why not go out on your own? Eliminate the politics, answer only to the customer? You know how to cultivate relationships, you know your craft, you want control of your own destiny. Why not go for it? Sure, you could put up a million road blocks to keep you from taking this step, but at the end of the day, do you want to control your career, or do you want to put up with the same nonsense in the next job for 2 years, then starting looking again?

I did this a couple of years ago and I can't believe the difference in my daily work enjoyment. My goal was simple: deliver the best possible service to my customer. Period. No CEO's agenda to follow, no corporate overhead that took away from this goal, no constant attempts at vying for new business, nothing. Just do all the things that ensured I took care of the interests of my customer. Seems to me you have all the tools to succeed.

I wish I knew how to become a full time consultant. But I don't. I would take on some side work if a customer ever hinted at such a thing. They never have. As far as I know, there are no 1099 employees or consultants that work with my company. I'm not scared off by the lack of steady paycheck or health insurance. I just don't know how I could do this job otherwise. The company wouldn't allow it and I don't know what I could for customers better or cheaper than we already do for them.

I got really excited a few weeks ago when I got an email in response to a cover letter I had written six mos. earlier. But it was for a two hour stint proofing a German website before it went live. I was paid a $50 AMEX gift card. But I did it for the experience and to meet some folks. That kind of work ain't gonna keep me real busy.

you want to ask your boss for advice on the biz problem

follow their lead at that metting tomorrow, and make some notes afterwards

make some friends in the new biz dept. also

Oh, I could switch to new biz dev. tomorrow for the asking. My boss has asked me several times if I wanted to do it. But the department is not well run and I only know of two or three folks who've lasted more than a year there. That director has probably burned through 30 NBDs in the three years since the program began. The problem there is that new clients don't spend big as soon as they sign up and it takes a lot of work to bring one in the door at all. They're good for cultivating into big spenders over time, but it takes at least two years to get them there. I still have some good ones I stole from competitors years ago when new biz was part of my job. They started out spending almost nothing and are now major clients. I never once reeled in a big fish right off the bat. It takes time once you win them.

To put it in perspective, I'm in the hole by about 4x the monthly quota of an NBD or about one month's worth of my own quota. So, if I completely ignored my existing accounts for four months, totally focused on new biz dev. and did as much new biz as the best NBD in the company, I'd be back to even, assuming I had no more goals attached from my existing territory. That's a taaaallll order and unrealistic.

Today I'm submitting a bid for an RFP, which, if we win it, could totally save me. But again, that's a hail Mary pass and not a good position to be in.