Remember when you were a kid and stayed home from school because you were sick?  Remember how weird it was to watch all those daytime TV talk shows and think, “so this is how the other half lives.”  Remember how it was even stranger when you accompanied your mother on a brief errand or visited the doctor’s office and saw people out and about as if the world of work and school didn’t exist?

I’ve now had a flexible work schedule for the better part of four years, but I’ve still spent the majority of my life ensconsed in a regular 7-3 or 9-5 routine.  Now, on maternity leave with a new baby, going out in public during the business week feels much like it did on those sick days so long ago.  Buying diapers at the grocery store, dropping off copies of my new book at the post office, and running back and forth to doctor’s appointments, I see crowds of people – adults who clearly don’t have 9-5 jobs and school-aged kids who are evidently getting more of an unorthodox education. 

In cities like New York and Chicago, this phenomenon is even more obvious.  Sometimes it feels as if there are more people hanging out in cafes during the workday than in clubs on a Saturday night.  It’s jarring, but, I believe, ultimately a good thing.  Technology has made it so we can do work anywhere, anytime, so why shouldn’t we become less rigid about the necessity of showing up at an office five days a week, for eight hours a day?  Maybe it’s only a matter of time before our work schedules are so variable that there’s no such thing as a “peak” time to ride the subway or a $5 weekday matinee at the movies.