What 15 years at home have taught me about discipline, isolation, a busy mind—and learning to live the life in front of me
Working from home sounds like freedom. And in a lot of ways, it is.
There's no commute. You can throw in a load of laundry. Make your own lunch. Take care of something around the house. Answer the phone. Run a business. Start dinner.
You can do all of it. And I've learned that's also part of the problem. Because when your home and your workplace are the same place, there isn't always a clear point where one ends and the other begins.
I've worked from home in one way or another for about 15 years. I started as a virtual assistant in real estate, and for the last 11 years my husband and I have been building and running our own auto transport and towing business here in Virginia.
I'm incredibly grateful for the freedom working from home has given me. But after all these years, I've also learned that freedom requires something from us.
Working from home takes discipline.
And not only the kind of discipline it takes to get your work done. I'm a lifelong introvert with a mind that can run a hundred miles an hour, and I've spent a lot of years struggling to know when to stop working, stop worrying, stop overthinking and just be present in the life in front of me.
Working from home can make that harder. When you spend a lot of time at home and sometimes a lot of time alone you can have plenty of time to think. And overthink.
I've questioned whether I'm doing enough. Whether I'm behind. Whether the work I'm doing is worth it. Whether I should be doing something different. Whether I'm where I'm supposed to be in life. I've even spent a lot of time questioning the small, quiet life I've worked so hard to build.
Am I content—or am I settling?
Should I be doing more?
Should I be somewhere else?
Boy, can your mind play tricks on you.
That's one reason my faith has become so important to me. I need something more reliable than every thought that happens to pass through my head.
Proverbs 3:5–6 reminds me not to lean entirely on my own understanding, but to trust the Lord and let Him direct my path.
I've needed that reminder more times than I can count. And apparently, there are a lot of us navigating at least some part of the working-from-home experience.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 35% of employed people did some or all of their work at home on days they worked in 2025. Research on remote work has found plenty of benefits, but it has also identified some of the things I've experienced myself—including isolation and blurred boundaries between work and personal life.
For me, it isn't that working from home doesn't work. I wouldn't want to give up what it's allowed me to build.
It's learning how to use the freedom without letting the freedom become another kind of chaos.
A Resource for Building Work Around Your Life
This is also the lesson behind our guide, We Didn't Build a Business Just to Work All the Time. It's about stepping back and deciding what you actually want your business to give your life—not just how much more you can give your business.
Here are three things I've learned along the way.
1. Give Your Day Some Boundaries
When you leave home to go to work, life gives you some natural boundaries.
You get ready. You leave. You work. Eventually, you come home.
When your office is inside your home, those boundaries can disappear. I can sit down to answer one email and still be sitting there hours later. Or I can start doing something around the house and suddenly realize half the morning is gone. I've done both.
And there's another strange part of working from home that I've come to understand:
Sometimes having more control can actually make you feel less in control.
Nobody is telling me when to start or stop. I can work at 6 a.m. or 9 p.m. I can do laundry in the middle of the workday. I can answer one more email after dinner. I can work all weekend. I can also get distracted by a hundred things that have nothing to do with work.
Having more choices doesn't automatically make life easier. Sometimes it means I need more discipline about the choices I'm making. One thing I've learned to remember is:
Just because I can do something right now doesn't mean I need to do it right now.
Work needs some time. The house needs some time. My marriage needs time. Prayer needs time. Taking care of myself needs time. And something I've had to become much more intentional about:
Enjoying my life needs time too.
Our business will always need something. There will always be another email, another idea, another bill, another project or something I could improve.
If I don't put some boundaries around work, it will gladly accept every minute I give it.
Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us that there is a season and a time for everything. Work is one of those things. But it isn't the only one. There is a time to work hard and there also has to be a time to stop.
2. Take Care of the Person Who Works From Home
This used to sound almost too simple to me to mention. After 15 years, I don't think it is. Get up. Shower. Get dressed. Open the blinds. Make the bed. Walk outside. Leave the house sometimes. Talk to another human being. Move your body. Do whatever tells your brain:
The day has started, and I'm part of it.
Nobody cares whether I sit at my computer in pajamas. I don't have a boss walking through the door checking whether I showed up on time. And as an introvert, staying home can come very naturally to me. Sometimes too naturally.
That's one of the complicated things I've learned about working from home. The place that feels safest and most comfortable can also become isolating if I'm not paying attention.
I've dealt with depression in my life, and I know myself well enough to understand that isolation, not taking care of myself, sitting too long and spending too much time inside my own thoughts aren't things I should simply ignore.
So some of my discipline has nothing to do with productivity. Sometimes I need to leave my work area. Go outside. See what Wayne is doing in the garage. Walk around our property. Drive the truck. Exercise. Go somewhere. Do something.
I've spent enough time sitting and thinking about everything I should be doing to know:
Thinking about living your life isn't the same thing as living it.
Sometimes the next right thing isn't another hour of work. Sometimes it's getting out of my own head and participating in the life happening around me.
3. Decide What Actually Matters Today
I can make an impossible list. Business. House. Calls. Paperwork. Laundry. Dinner. Website. Writing. YouTube. Exercise. Prayer. And now there are more opportunities, platforms, information, videos, ideas and possibilities available to us than I could ever keep up with.
For somebody whose mind already likes to overthink things, that's not always exciting. Sometimes it's overwhelming.
I've stayed away from social media at different times for that very reason. Comparison. Wondering what everybody else is doing. Wondering what I should be doing. Feeling behind. Thinking everybody else has figured out something I haven't.
You're behind.
You can't figure all this out.
You're too old to start now.
You won't be able to keep up.
Those thoughts can feel convincing. That doesn't make them true. Age has taken some things from all of us. But it's also given me something I didn't have when I was younger:
experience.
I've worked since I was 14. I've spent more than 30 years around real estate and small business. I've been married, raised a family, helped build businesses, watched things fail, started again and learned quite a bit about myself along the way.
I don't need to keep up with everything. I need to pay attention to what actually matters. So instead of starting every morning carrying my entire future, I've learned to ask a much better question:
What actually matters today?
Not everything that matters this year. Not everything I eventually want Axles & Acres to become. Not everything our business needs. Not everything our house needs.
Today.
Some days towing is going to take most of the day. Some days I need to write. Sometimes the house genuinely needs attention. Sometimes I need to go outside with my husband. And sometimes I need to sit beside the pool for half an hour and enjoy this place we've worked so hard to have.
That last one hasn't always come naturally to me. There's almost always something productive I could be doing. But I've learned to question what productive really means.
Proverbs 16:3 tells us to commit our work to the Lord and trust Him with our plans.
For me, that has meant learning that I don't have to carry the entire future every morning. I can pray. I can decide what deserves my attention. I can do the work that's mine to do. And I can trust God with what isn't.
A Few of My Go-To Resources for Working From Home
After all these years of working from home and running a small business, I've learned I don't need a hundred tools. These are a few of the things and resources I actually use to help me keep the work organized and make this life a little easier.
My Dell Laptop — This has been my main work laptop for years and is what I use for everything from running the business to writing and working on Axles & Acres.
Small Business Profit & Loss Statement — A simple tool I created to help keep track of the numbers without making small-business bookkeeping more complicated than it needs to be.
Behind the Scenes — A look at more of the tools, software and resources we actually use to run our business, website and Axles & Acres.
A Place for Beacons — My quieter corner for the books, thoughts, recommendations and little things I've found helpful along the way.
Maybe I Wasn't Settling After All
This is the part of working from home that I didn't understand years ago. I fought with this small, calm life for a long time. Somewhere in the back of my mind was always the question of whether I was settling.
There are so many directions a life can go. So many opportunities. So many things we could build. So many versions of ourselves we could become.
But when I stop looking at everything I could have and actually look at the life in front of me, I see something different now. It's the view outside my window. It's my husband being here for me the way he is. It's learning that I can be married and still have some space and independence of my own—something that's always been important to me. It's the animals that depend on us and somehow give so much back. It's a little piece of land to walk on, work on and take care of. It's a quiet place surrounded by nature. It's somewhere our children and grandchildren can come and feel at home. It's a business that can take a lot from us, yes but it's also ours.
We built it. We own it. And ultimately, we get to make choices about what place it gets to have in our lives.
And it's the opportunity to work from home—something I know not everyone has and something I'm much more grateful for now than I used to be.
None of those things are perfect. They all require work. But almost anything worth building is going to require something from us. Maybe the answer isn't always to keep searching for a different life.
Sometimes we need to learn how to recognize the value of the one that's already in front of us.
Freedom Still Requires Something From Us
This has become a much bigger lesson for me than simply working from home.
You can spend years building freedom and still have to learn how to live it.
Working from home gives me freedom. Owning our business gives us freedom. Living out here gives us freedom. But freedom without discipline can become confusion.
And if I'm so disciplined about working that I never leave room to live, I've turned that freedom into something else entirely.
I've learned that I need both. Discipline to start. Discipline to focus. Discipline to do what I'm responsible for doing. And discipline to recognize when I've done what was mine to do for today.
I don't need another complicated productivity system. I need to pay attention.
How am I spending my time?
What's distracting me?
What am I avoiding?
What thoughts am I treating as facts?
What actually matters today?
Am I taking care of the people and things God has already put in my life?
And am I allowing myself to enjoy any of it?
That's part of what Axles & Acres has become for me. It may have started with a towing business and a little piece of land. But somewhere between the axles and the acres is the life we're actually living. The work. The house. Marriage. The road. Faith. Our minds. The ordinary days.
I'm not trying to stop working. I'm learning to build work that supports our life instead of continually taking it over. And I'm learning something else too:
Maybe freedom isn't always somewhere else. Sometimes it's already here, and we have to learn how to see it. Because freedom isn't only about creating the life you want.
Sometimes it's learning how to live the life you've already worked so hard to build.
Build the work. Live the life. Remember what matters. 🌾
— Brenda
If This Resonated With You 🌾
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Sources
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — American Time Use Survey, 2025 Results
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — American Time Use Survey, 2025 Results
American Psychological Association — Remote Work Research
American Psychological Association — The Future of Remote Work
