People often stop me on the street and ask, "Mike, what's it like working from home?" After I avert their gaze and mumble something unintelligible, I go home and send them an email or an instant message that says this:

For the first few weeks, you're starved for human interaction. Telemarketers become your friends and you develop a Pavlovian response to the doorbell. (Why, yes, I would like to hear about Jesus!). If you have roommates or a spouse, your puppy-like behavior when they return to the house each day will be endearing, and then, after a few days, annoying. When they swat you across the nose with a newspaper, you'll have mixed feelings. On one hand, pain bad. On the other hand, attention good.

After a while (maybe months, maybe years), the pendulum swings the other dysfunctional way. You start to shun social contact. Occasionally you find yourself peering out your windows from a crack in the curtains. Your disdain for telemarketers returns. Any friendly dog-like tendencies that you gained in the first few weeks, are replaced with cat-like indifference. You read blogs.

Eventually you move into the final phase where you make peace with it all. It is during this phase that you finally reap the greatest reward of working at home, wearing no pants. You can save tons of money on pants. Theoretically you can save a lot of money on all clothing and hygiene items in general, but I'm going with pants here because no pants is funnier than no shirts. A guy sitting at his desk with no shirt on is just a slob.