Sometimes a nine-to-five is preferable.

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It's almost 01:00. It's almost always almost 01:00. That's basically the time at which I'm able to sit and write these columns. By the clock, at least, this is my own time, not company time. It's time that I might otherwise spend reading or sleeping, or zapping away at the television. So if I want to spend my time writing columns for a rather secluded corner of the World Wide Web, 'taint nobody's business if I do.

But it's not quite that easy. I take my work home with me, and sometimes that means reading, or writing, until late at night. Company time seems to always be invading private time. Often it seems to conquer it. At the least the borders between the two have become blurred. If, late at night, I choose to devote time to writing these columns instead of doing other work that might have a deadline, am I writing on private or on company time? If I've spent the night writing, and then in the morning am too tired to do my work well, have I actually been switching my schedule, but still working on company time?

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Go to: ... it's almost a part of me, or
Go to: Something for Nothing.