We all have this vision (Pinterest helps with that) of that little place in our home that is our “workspace.” You know the one’s….the nook with the perfectly organized hutch, state of the art laptop, vision board pinned artfully up. I tried. I moved my desk into the kitchen nook, my mom even bought me a new leather chair. I bought storage bins and an in/out tray and felt SO ready for being SERIOUS about the whole work at home thing.
This is what is looks like today:
I am serious about working from home. In all honesty the cost of daycare is far too prohibitive that unless I was made CEO of a company, I don’t know if full time work out of the home now would be feasible. Instead, here I am creating my own work and doing it in the centre of a hurricane I call my family.
Take today for example. Don’t forget it is summer time, so that means all THREE kids are home and under foot as summer camps fall into that whole ‘budget’ thing. Today I had a conference call first thing. Now my son has been doing a pretty good job of taking ‘work’ time seriously and was quite happy to try to keep the three year old organized. Even with the promise of summer fun after order was crumbling even before I got on the phone. I came away from the call to news that not only had one dog barfed everywhere, the other one had felt so left out that it had pooped all over the My Little Ponies left scattered about. The kids had been frantically trying to clean up happily dumping poop into the garbage can that did not have a garbage bag in it. Meaning that I then had the task of cleaning up a poop filled container before trying to get everyone out the door. Shower? Oh yeah…THEY were all clean and ready to go….me not so much.
A bit less glamorous than a day at the office no?
People talk about how summer can throw of the WAHM balance and yes the noise level gets a bit louder but my two older kids actually are a great help in distracting Tara so it actually makes things a bit easier in a sense. The issue lies in the fact that is lovely weather and what would you rather do? Work or be outside PLAYING???!!!
Many people don’t have that choice, and in reality I don’t either. I need my career aspirations to succeed. I am hungry enough that I know I have to stick to my guns….sunshine or not. What the summer months mean is that I have to plan things out a bit more….be more scheduled and organized than I am in the winter months. It is all about give and take. I tell the kids if I do XYZ for you on these days, you need to lay low at home on these OTHER days so mom can actually focus on work.
The balancing act isn’t just family and work it is work and FUN. The summer days are far more of a lure from home than they were from my office days when we could pretend that the outside world did not exist from inside our cubicles.
Those were the days.
The reality of WAHM for me is a messy house, messy kids and a desk I can’t use. These days I can at least take my work outside to my patio until the kids are yelling for something else to eat or drink.
What is your reality? Does it look like something from Pinterest?
I have a problem with good weather. I can’t stand to be inside. It hurts me. I want to watch my son revel in summer in the spray park, at the pool, in the yard, at the beach, wherever!
But I have to work so … well … ((cough))….