It’s a complete no-no, I think, if you’re ever to keep your sanity working a nine-to-five job: eating at your desk. I renounced it while plugging away as a corporate worker bee, and it was for the best. (Maybe too much so, as I’d developed a habit of also taking breaks mid-morning and late in the afternoon, for hand-drawn espresso from the amazing place down the street from my office. Actually, now that I think back on it, I really did not spend much time at my desk at all.)

Following those rules when you work from home? Not so easy.

I’m at my desk now, with an enormous salad in front of me. Long ago seem those days of leisurely lunchtime strolls through Union Square, shoes in the window at Sacco taunting me. Let’s be honest: there are days when I don’t change from flip-flops to normal, respectable shoes. The saleswomen at Sacco would definitely raise their eyebrows at my idea of acceptable office wear these days.

The fact is, I’m procrastinating. For various reasons, work life lately has been trying. Even the stuff I normally like fills me with dread, not to mention the stuff I have to grin and bear on a good day.

Is it really that time again? Have I already reached that part in the cycle of my working life? The part that has me sitting around, moaning to myself, Do I really have to do this for the rest of my life? This happens about every one to three years. I’m like a guy who can’t commit to marriage: I date lots of jobs, some of them seem okay for a while, and I even try to make careers out of them sometimes, but in the end I’m frightened of the prospect of settling down with one of any of them.

I do not have a particularly pragmatic view of work. Unless you can count not liking to work as pragmatic. You will likely want to tell me to get over it, but I have a bizarre desire to do something that I really enjoy and get paid for it. And have weekends off, time to spend with the people I love. I have yet to find what this is. And I realize that even at this perfect job, not every day would be a box of cupcakes. (Or maybe it would. Perhaps I should be a baker?)

I’m wondering what it might be, this thing that I’ll enjoy doing every day.