I'm the owner + photographer at Anne Casey Photography — serving Maryland & Pennsylvania

It’s been over 18 months since I left the world where I worked for someone else, answered to other people, and all of that fun stuff. Most people call that a regular job! Ha! While every day is certainly a learning experience, today I’ve got 5 juicy tidbits of information that no one tells you about working for yourself from home! 

1. The days are L. O. N. G. I’m talking long! It can be really hard to stick to normal business working hours when you live at your office! Some days I start as early as 7am, other days (like today) I’m drafting blog posts at 9:45pm. Most days I try to call it quits a little before 5pm and close up for the day. Structure is great, but isn’t always on the menu.

2. Target is 1000% more tempting than it ever was before. Especially if you live 5 minutes away from it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve decided to make a completely unnecessary Target run when a gallery is exporting. The way I see it, my computer is so bogged down doing that, that anything else I were to try to accomplish on the computer would take so much longer that I may as well save it for later.

3. There’s never anything for lunch. EVER. This is a constant struggle! I’ve tried prepping salads for the week and that gets old quickly. I’ve tried keeping sandwich stuff in the house, but then my husband eats it up. Sometimes there are leftovers, but my husband eats those pretty often, too. You’ll feel guilty if you order take out all of the time because it gets expensive and don’t want to pay even more for delivery because you’re ‘not that lazy’ (except you totally are…). Grilled cheese and tomato soup can only be eaten so often, am I right? 

4. Getting dressed is obviously a huge waste of your time. You work from home. You work from home alone. You work from home alone and it’s mostly in front of a computer. Why on earth does this call for real pants? Or shoes? Forget makeup or jewelry- that’s saved for really fancy days when you leave the house for a meeting. 

5. There isn’t really anyone to talk to all day. Most of my friends have ‘regular’ jobs. My husband leaves around 7am and gets home a little before dinner. I almost feel bad for him when he walks in the door because I just have so much to say and I’ve been holding it in all. day. long. He’s getting used to it and I try not to completely dump my brain when he gets home. It seems like we’ve found a happy middle ground. 

What are some of the biggest changes you’ve faced when going from corporate America to work-at-home entrepreneur?