Sometime in the past few weeks, Marissa Mayer, the current pres of Yahoo decided to  yank the option for Yahoo employees to work from home. Return to the office, she essentially said, or go work for someone else.

I, like many people, thought it was a ludicrous decision and I’ve been inwardly ragey at Marissa Mayer since, even though I do not (nor do I plan to ever) work for Yahoo.

The resulting dialogue of her decision has gotten all feminist-like and working moms like and family values-ish. I guess that is only natural – and Mayer herself probably didn’t help that perception at all by taking that wicked-fast maternity leave (to each their own, but two weeks? I breezed through pregnancy and delivery and even the hardiest women will experience some shifting as the hormones regulate post pregnancy. Trust me when I say that no one needed to be around me two weeks after I had kids. And frankly, two weeks postpartum? My babies needed me more than any office did.)

But I digress (but clearly, with that side rant, you can see how the conversation goes this way).

The arguments I’m hearing keep centering on work-life balance, parenthood, working moms.

That’s legit.

But that’s not why I disagree with Marissa Mayer.

Because you see, I think that the empty nester or the young college graduate who doesn’t have kids yet, they might want to work from home also. And it’s not necessarily about family, but about productivity and about what makes sense for their jobs. It’s about what makes sense for their personality and work style. It’s about what makes sense and what agreements are made between manager and team member.

I worked remotely for six years following the birth of my youngest daughter – and they way it happened was a flukey weird bizarro thing, yes – but for six years, I thrived, working from a home office. Yes, I was able to work around my family. Yes, I could work a big chunk during the days and then pick up to finish my day once children were tucked in at night. I’m an introvert – I didn’t mind that I wasn’t in a bustling office filled with coworkers (in fact, I’m inherently more productive working from home – even with all the distractions that being home affords me).

As a parent, working from home did benefit me. I was able to save money in childcare, I was able to be more present in the day to day events for both of my daughters.

But make no mistake, my employer benefitted too.

A company relocation out of state is what rendered the telecommuting situation necessary – and by keeping me on board rather than hiring someone new at the new location, they didn’t experience any lag in service because I was able to keep doing the work. Given that the job focused around websites and digital communications, it lent itself to a remote work style. My employer didn’t have overhead for me – sure, I used a company provided laptop but that was pretty much it.

For the type of work and for the type of employee I am, it made sense. It was a mutually beneficial agreement that served me well and served my employer well.

It was definitely win-win.

And this is where I think Marissa Mayer screwed up.

This blanket “NO REMOTE WORK” policy changes the work situation for a lot of employees. I’m not sure how many people started work at Yahoo with the condition of working from home, but if I were those people? I’d be peeved.

There are indeed people who would take advantage of a telecommuting job situation – those people shouldn’t be allowed to do so. It’s up to the employee and manager to discuss expectations and it’s up to the management to determine that objectives are being met and that the arrangement remains mutually beneficial. When it comes down to the bottom line, HELL YES, Yahoo (and any other organizations) should want the most bang for their buck – they should want to know that their employees are giving it their all, that they’re not loafing on the couch watching a marathon of Friday Night Lights on Netflix.

But – rather than rule it out for everyone, I believe they should assess each situation on a case-by-case basis. Let each manager work with their telecommuting employee and set goals and objectives. Let that manager gauge each individual situation. Adjust as needed.

As a remote worker, I worked harder than I ever have in my life – because I felt I was battling this stereotype that I was at home being lazy. I worked hard to constantly keep myself visible, present and prove that I was still there and I was pulling my weight, even if I was doing so while wearing pajamas and fuzzy slippers.

Mayer argues that the change is about communication and collaboration. At any given moment, I can think of a handful of methods that can be used to contact me – including but not limited to: Skype, email, text/iMessage, phone, gChat, FaceTime. Documents can be scanned. They can be emailed. I can throw them in Dropbox. There are apps that can be used. Basecamp is also great.

I have had better collaborative work relationships in some cases with people across the country that I’ve never even met than with people I passed in the halls daily. Distance never hampered communication or the ability to collaborate.

I don’t think the focus on working parents belongs here – though I am certain that many work-from-home parents were negatively impacted by the decision at Yahoo. I think the discussion, instead, should center on employee satisfaction and productivity and how people don’t necessarily thrive in cookie cutter situations. Happy employees are more productive, plain and simple. Employers shouldn’t shut those avenues down completely if they can help it.

With any organization, there are jobs that don’t lend themselves to a work-from-home situation. That could well be the case at Yahoo. But by putting the kibosh on all at-home work situations, Marissa Mayer scored a big thumbs down in my book. I imagine she has quite a few unhappy employees, and I realllllly don’t blame them.

It’s Friday night and I am alternately watching the dog contort himself to sniff his backside and mindlessly singing along to “Besame Mucho” which is what shuffle has decided would be next for my listening pleasure. I’m not fluent in Spanish, and haven’t used it in quite a long time – so you can imagine how the singing is going.

I’m fine if I don’t think too much – my sister was over earlier and we were talking about work. I haven’t seen her in awhile, and so I was explaining that I have about six weeks left of full time work. I explained that I have quite nearly exhausted the available options right now for next steps {Paused writing this post to return an email. And now I have quite nearly exhausted every option. One more email to write.} I could feel my eyes starting to fill up with stupid tears while I was talking to her – changed the subject, swooped up my niece, and tried to re-focus my thinking elsewhere.

It’s Friday and a weekend is here and oh, I am so relieved for a weekend – but that means that another week has swooped by and oh, they can’t all go by this fast.

I feel my brain getting caught in the hamster wheel and it’s the thinking that stresses me out and I really need to stop thinking.

I came home from work, pushed myself hard on the treadmill. The exertion felt good – something tells me that this is a far better use of my anxious energy than staring at the wall thinking of every worst case scenario (one train of thought today had me and the girls living in a refrigerator carton on the side of a road somewhere – a ridiculous thought, because even if things ever got that bad, cardboard living isn’t in the cards because there are other options). But that’s how my brain goes.

I hate my brain sometimes.

The same brain that gives me creativity and words and vision – the things about me that I love because I am creative can just as quickly be things that bring me misery because that imagination is an equal-opportunity imagination.

I keep thinking that writing it down, that blogging it will help. That getting it out of my head and out into the ether takes it from being some concept that keeps my brain churning and forces me to realize that it’s either not so bad or it is but that it won’t be so bad always.

Am I calmer now having written? Maybe.

The dog is no longer chasing his butt.

Shuffle is now playing The Civil Wars.

I am thinking of curling up in bed, seeing how many episodes of Breaking Bad I can watch before my brain gives up on me. There is nothing I can do right this minute to alter my situation. Absolutely nothing. (Unless you’re reading this and have taken pity on me and want to hire me to write everything for you ever.)

That’s what I have to remember. There’s worry – reasonable and irrational. And it just doesn’t make sense to let my brain run away with me right now.

I think I may have just talked myself out of my tree.

For now.

Last week, I learned that my job would ultimately be transitioning to part time.

The implications of this, as you can imagine, have got me feeling all kinds of ways about things – life things, financial things, “who did I piss off in a past life?” things. There is no ideal time for plans to get knocked off course, and so it is up to me to deal with it somehow, to find a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and to hopefully come up with a way to make everything work before everything somehow falls apart.

I don’t love uncertainty.

You know that. If you’ve been around, reading this space for any given time, you know that. You’re certain of it, even.

I am not certain what the answer is.

I am not certain what I’m going to do.

That freaks me out.

All I can do is the best I can do and I struggle with that because the best I can do often doesn’t feel good enough. The best I can do often feels like I’m doing nothing. The best I can do sometimes involves watching Netflix for hours on end until I look at the clock and realize that maybe maybe maybe I should be sleeping.

I look at my bank balance and I wish that numbers didn’t intimidate me. I think I should make budgets and make solutions and possibly clip coupons.

I reprogrammed my thermostat so that as I type this, the temperature in the living room is starting to dip for the night and I am wanting to wrap myself in a throw blanket to keep warm. I’ve read you can save between 1 – 3% on your heating bill for every degree you lower the temperature. That shizz better be true.

But it’s something I can do.

When I feel so stuck and like things are out of my hands, to successfully program my thermostat so that maybe next month my energy bill won’t rival the national debt makes me feel like I’m taking back a little bit of control from my life – my life that seems to be holding the reigns while I am merely along for the ride. To prepare smaller meals to waste less food. To ease up on the Starbucks habit. To pack my stupid lunch every day for work even though I a) hate packing my lunch, b) hate eating what I’ve packed and c) would much rather go out for tacos.

This is not the end of the world. And I am told that everything will be okay (please, keep telling me that. It helps.). It will be. Nothing is as bad as it seems, but it’s all shaded by the color of uncertainty and frankly uncertainty has never made anything look better.

It’s my hope that struggle is temporary.

I’ll keep doing my best.

I’ll keep looking for solutions.

And breathing in and out.

And trying to focus on what is good instead of dwelling on what isn’t.

And I will wrap myself in a thick blanket and keep warm because otherwise my body will turn into a giant icicle because holy moley it’s cold in here.

I almost hit a wild turkey on my drive in to work this morning.

The sky was clear and bright, the day was already warm. It’s been very warm here lately, like we’ve bypassed spring and run straight into summer and I’m not really a fan. I spent far too long this morning trying to figure out what to wear, what would be office appropriate, weather appropriate and took into account the fact that the air conditioning over my desk wasn’t fully functional (it’s strange – if you round the corner near my desk, the humidity hits you – the air just doesn’t work there).

After my hurried rush around the house getting ready, getting in the car to drive to work was a moment of calm – a moment of calm because for that time I’m on the road I didn’t need to do laundry, pack lunches, find clothes, apply mascara, none of that. All I had to do was drive.

I was driving, the radio turned up to some crappy morning radio show. They do a lot of talking in the mornings and this morning they were talking about Lindsay Lohan’s parents and how apparently the Lohans, shining example of quality parenting, are now charging by the minute to talk to people. Nice. Also, how is this newsworthy?

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a turkey scurry across the street.

Why did the turkey cross the road?

To test Sarah’s reaction time.

Then another turkey started its journey across. This one didn’t have a lot of room to spare like its buddy. This one required I slam on my brakes so as not to hit it.

You should never brake for anything smaller than a dog.

Is a turkey bigger or smaller than a dog? A turkey is pretty tall. If you hit a turkey can you throw it in the back of you car and take it home?

And within seconds the episode was over. Onward!

Stop to breathe in the sun rising. Cars whizzing past as I rolled down my window to snap a photograph. Realize that it’s not enough to watch the sun rise in my rear view mirror each day – that sometimes I need to stop and appreciate it. How beautiful. How brilliant and perfect and magical it is to see the sun rise.

Onward.

A cup of coffee and merging on to the highway. At this point in my commute the highway is teeming with travelers, those commuting like me, and semis, so many semis. I know you need the trucking industry to deliver damn near everything, but while I commute, I don’t like them. Not quite fast enough to keep with the traffic. While passing a series of trucks, a woman in a Jaguar behind me in the left lane impatiently surveyed the traffic. She passed me on the right, giving me a rolled eye angry face and a flip of the middle finger… before immediately getting stuck behind the cars that I had been trailing, the cars that had prevented me from going faster. I chuckled. Her impatience, her little Nascar maneuver and yet she was no further ahead. A mile down the road I laughed even harder when a car purposely cut Jaguar McCrankyPants off and then slowed…way…down.

Miles later, I’m in my parking spot. Keys in hand, bags slung over shoulder. A chirp of the door lock as I exit my car and venture into the building.

Ready to start another day.

In May, my job was eliminated and even though I had been tremendously frustrated by the experience towards the end and thought I’d prepared myself for the inevitable layoff, it still hit like a ton of bricks. Even though I wasn’t in love with the job, it was a job, and it was my job, and change is yucky.

And then true to fashion for the Company, they realized how much work I was doing that they couldn’t immediately farm out. They hired me on a part-time/contract basis and on I soldiered, doing what I was used to doing.

I continued with the contract work through the summer while interviewing for jobs.

I continued after I started my new job.

I continued even after I realized how tired I was working a full day, coming home and working some more.

I knew that they would be transitioning my role, that it was fading and that they’d hired someone who could do the same thing and more, but in house. So it wasn’t like I thought it was a permanent situation. Hell, I didn’t want to work there forever anymore.

And then.

At the beginning of January, I tried to log on to my computer to get some work done. And couldn’t. A call to technical support told me my account was disabled and I left a voice mail message for the woman I reported to. The next day she called me back to say: “Oh, December 31 was your last day. I forgot to tell you.”

So, I guess I’m done.

I sent my materials back, and with very little fanfare it’s over and done and after ten years of working for the Company (whose name I am still not mentioning because it’s not nice), it’s over.

And while I have to say: it was good while it lasted and I am grateful for the part time work to hold me over while I searched for and found a job, I find it amazing to believe that ten years of service and hard work doesn’t warrant more courtesy than an “Oops, I forgot.”

I guess I should be so grateful, in this economy, to have had a job that I would happily excuse bad behavior but instead I am left with an odd feeling: I am relieved to have had the experience, I am relieved to be saying goodbye to them at a time when I saw it coming and I didn’t need them, and yet I have this bad taste in my mouth of how is there so little regard for the PEOPLE in an organization that a little courtesy didn’t seem to register on one’s radar long enough to actually follow through with it.

It is what it is.

Because ultimately the end result is this: I have work. I now have a little more free time that I was ready to have. I don’t have to come home and start another shift of work with their projects.

It’s all good, right?

Yes. It really is.

Wishing they’d handled it differently surely doesn’t make it so. Feeling that I deserved more kindness at the closure doesn’t make it happen. And since I haven’t invented a time machine and surely they haven’t either, it can’t be re-done, undone, or changed.

It is what it is.

And so it goes and so it’s done.

And life goes on.