It’s Thursday, so I’m Crafting my Life! If you’d like to make a change in your life, visit me on my Crafting my Life site, or subscribe to my mail list. If you’d like to share a story from your own Crafting my Life journey, drop me a line and let me know.
My colleagues
Becoming a Work-at-Home Mom
I’m a work-at-home mom, but my life wasn’t always this way. When I worked in an office, I understood the dynamic: I was there to do stuff for my employer. Full stop. This didn’t mean that I could never send a personal email or socialize with my co-workers, but it meant that my primary purpose in the office was to work, and that work should take precedence over everything else. I shouldn’t spent my time playing around online, or writing the Great Canadian Novel, or napping.
Now that I work from home, the dynamic is clearly different. I don’t have an office with a door that shuts, so my work space blends into my living space in a big way. My purpose here in my home isn’t primarily to work. I’m just as responsible for taking care of my kids, preparing meals, cleaning, and managing the basic details of living. I find this interferes with my productivity in many ways. Just now, for instance, I was thinking about how I need to prepare for my daughter Hannah’s birthday party this weekend, and I just about got out of my chair to check our supply of googly eyes. As long as I’m at home, the distractions are constant, with many little details constantly vying for my attention.
Limited Time and Competing Priorities
When my time and resources are limited – and every parent’s time and resources are limited – I have an internal prioritization that I employ. It’s not even entirely conscious, but it’s there. One of the concepts that I tend to apply unthinkingly is that the things I do for other people need to happen first. This means when my clients or employers send me an email, I hop right to it. And when one of my kids need something, I don’t even think, I just drop whatever I’m doing and attend to that need. Because my work and home life are blended, I don’t have dedicated times when either request stream is turned off. Work stuff comes my way on evenings and weekends, and my kids are around on weekdays.
This thing I do – putting other people first – is a habit I picked up a long time ago. It’s based on a social nicety that says we shouldn’t be selfish. We should be nice and giving, and then people will like us. There will always be time to spend on ourselves later. Except that if there’s anything that’s become increasingly clear to me as I get older, it’s this: later never comes. There will always be outside interests vying for your time, attention and energy. That’s just life.
Putting Myself First
As I consider my situation, the solution is increasingly clear to me. I need to put myself – and the things that matter most to me – first. That could mean getting up early to do yoga, spending more time following my bliss, setting aside dedicated time when I turn off my social media streams and don’t check email so I can work on my own project, or even going outside with my kids. Whatever it looks like, if I’m going to move forward, I need to make sure that my actions align with my priorities and core values. There won’t always be as much to to spend on my pet projects as I like, but if I take care of them before I handle other things, I can be sure that they don’t get lost in the daily shuffle.
It isn’t easy to keep your work and home life in balance when you’re literally combining the two as a work-at-home mom. The challenges of this lifestyle are a recurring theme as I struggle to create a life of purpose and authenticity. Slowly, I’m getting better at it, though. I can see the improvement as I look back over the past few months and years. Like all things in life, it’s a process, and I need to be patient with myself as I work through it.
How do you keep your work and home lives separate – or do you? And do you find that you always end up last as demands keep cropping up? How do you handle it? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
amberstrocel
amberstrocel
amberstrocel
amberstrocel
amberstrocel
amberstrocel
amberstrocel
amberstrocel
Twitter: pomomama
says:
Me is currently coming close to last these days, and by me I mean any form of self-care in the form of exercise or leisure activity. I think this bit of Me is being neglected because Me is (selfishly) back at college pursuing her dreams. So, in order to fit in homework, housework and a myriad of volunteer projects, Me takes last place in the pecking order for time available. Us is also on the back burner these days; if I don’t have time to organize Me stuff then I clearly don’t have enough time to whip up good times for two.
This is something I need to change.*
As for setting boundaries for my work-at-home life – I try not to fritter working time on housework and have managed to corral this type of activity to the weekend or around the breakfast/dinner prep times. There is no sense in me using the peace and quiet of an empty house to stack the dishwasher or clean toilets, though I see the sense in floor cleaning when the boys are out. I’m gradually training them to expect less from me in terms of domestic maintenance anyway as I head off into paying work once more.
*Change meant downloading ArtRage, a digital art program … whoopeee!
pomomama’s last post … wordless wednesday: pecha kucha night Coquitlam
Twitter: Wendy_Irene
says:
Finding a way to fit in yoga would be so awesome!! I can’t tell you how much it helps me now that I have been doing it regularly for the past 8 weeks. As with meditation, at first it can be ho-hum and then you start doing it for a while and you don’t know what you ever did without it. It makes me appreciate my body more. It feels like an act of self-love. Can you tell I highly, highly recommend it?
If you want a beginner DVD I LOVE Elena Brower Element: Am and PM Yoga for Beginners. Her voice is so soothing! Keep us posted!
Wendy Irene’s last post … Fitness Goal: Week 8
Great post Amber! I don’t have the answer. As a teacher and mama of two little girls, I feel like I’m SURROUNDED by needy people 24/7. My current way of dealing with this is to giveandgiveandgive until I reach a breaking point and then get sick and hide away at home like an animal in a cave, drinking up the silence and the calm like someone who is really thirsty drinks up water. Then emerging and starting the whole process over again. Intellectually I know this is not the way to be, but I haven’t yet figured out a good, sturdy fix.
Audra’s last post … Celebration Eve
My babe hits the 8-month mark this week and is busy, busy, busy! To date, a lot of my ‘me’ time has really been ‘us’ time…including mommy & babe fitness classes, daily walks with the dog and baths with a buddy. I’m still figuring out work balance. While I quickly mastered the ‘do as much as humanly possible during nap time” work pace, my ‘to do’ list continues to be daunting and the backlog of emails in my inbox is embarrassing. That said, I still feel a sense of accomplishment on the work, home and personal side of things most days…most.
Twitter: AmberStrocel
says:
Most new moms in Canada take a year of maternity leave – so if you’re getting ANYTHING done while taking care of an 8-month-old, I think that’s pretty impressive!
I did it for a decade, but at the end, my personal issues stepped in. Personal and work does mix, and that offers both advantages and disadvantages. Using some means of organisation like Outlook to schedule essential tasks helps. The time matters not, but getting them done each day does.
nelle’s last post … trauma
Oh yes, I was just thinking about the “Gee, I really need to make my own self-care a priority” thing this morning. Wait, I’ve been thinking about it for a few years now, but I was especially thinking of it this morning. We work from home and are our own bosses, why the heck not make the most of it, right? Somehow it is easier said than done. Too often I don’t eat until the late afternoon or realize I’m terribly uncomfortable because I’ve been avoiding peeing. Crazy. For me, the hardest part is allowing myself to say no to someone or something and then finding myself overwhelmed with stuff to do. And also remembering to eat well and drink water.
Twitter: MarilynBelsham
says:
As my work-at-home-life heats up a little more each week, this is becoming more of a concern for me. I still only have the couple hours two days a week of preschool to get things done and that just isn’t working any more. Obviously the fact that I’m going from one sickness to another is proof that I’m running myself down and NOT spending time for me. I have no idea how to fix this at this point to be honest, but I do need to spend some time considering the future.
Marilyn @ A Lot of Loves’s last post … Pop Quiz, Hotshot
Twitter: osnsmom
says:
I’m just coming to the realization that I am a WAHM. And it’s really hard. I can’t seem to find that balance. I feel like I’m always working not matter what. Grrr.
Old School/New School Mom’s last post … Mama/Son Day Out