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I was at an event earlier today where the main speaker, an uber-successful mom CEO and entrepreneur with two kids, gave the intro speech and talked about what she has learned about being a working mom who has a demanding career. When it came time for questions a woman in the audience asked her if she ever worried that her working so much negatively affected her kids and their relationship with her.
I couldn’t figure out if the question was a bit passive-aggressive or genuinely from someone who wanted to know how this woman managed to be a mom and high-powered career woman, but it struck me nonetheless. Her response was very honest — she talked about issues her older son is having at school and how she felt that her and her husband not being around as much when he was younger probably had something to do with his current lack of motivation. She said that they learned their lessons and she doesn’t feel like their youngest is getting the short end of the parenting stick.
Driving home I was thinking about this question as it applies to my own life. Read the rest of this entry »
Last night I was exhausted by 8pm, which was annoying, since that’s when the second half of my working day begins. It was a more stressful Monday than usual because my grandmother had surgery in the morning — all is OK for now, fingers crossed — and I’d spent a lot of time on the phone talking with various members of my family, calming them down and pretending to be calm myself. Pretending takes a lot of energy.
I had a bunch of work to get done but he first thing I did was to make dinner for the next two days. Read the rest of this entry »
According to CareerBuilder.com Mother’s Day survey 43% of working mothers would be willing to take a pay cut if they could spend more time with their children and 51% of working moms from two-income households would quit their job if their partner’s income was enough to support the family.
I wasn’t surprised when I read the first part. I was at an event recently where I met working mom after working mom who changed careers or modified her job to have more time for family and kids. On days when my stress level is through the roof and I can’t seem to get enough work done or spend quality time with my daughter I often start thinking whether I should be doing something to dramatically change my career path and make it less demanding and consuming. I love to work and I’ve never thought about staying at home full-time, but I do know that if I worked less, it would be easier to juggle. Read the rest of this entry »
If I’ve learned anything during the past year it’s that life as an entrepreneur is literally like a roller-coaster — it’s either up or down, with very few plateaus in between. The last few weeks have been tough, for a number of reasons, and I’m feeling it. I’m exhausted, I’m cranky, I’m not very fun to be around (unless you’re my laptop, in which case you’re getting plenty of love.) And in my effort to find some more balance — ha! — between my work and my life outside of work, I decided that I needed to uses this weekend to recover a bit.
Not working is not an option, but here are a few breaks I’ve given myself and some little luxuries in which I am indulging in an effort to stop being so down and cranky, and frankly, annoying to be around: Read the rest of this entry »
I had lunch with a friend recently whose husband has been offered an amazing job… abroad. They have both worked abroad before and loved it, but this was before they had two kids. My friend had a super successful career in business before she took a bit of time off to be a mom, but has spent the last few years starting up a business of her own. It was just starting to pick up steam when this awesome job offer for her husband came through.
The decision to uproot your family and move a thousand miles away is never easy when you have kids (hey, we moved from New York to Boston and a year later, I am still recovering.) So much goes into consideration — living arrangements, schools, activities, work, etc. But when moving involves one spouse taking a dream job and another potentially slowing down her own career or business, it’s much more complicated. Read the rest of this entry »
I feel so giddy right now that I have to write a post about it:
I am Completely. Alone. In our house.
One of the most common and I think, quite good, pieces of advice I’ve heard about being a working mom is to look at my life in terms of phases or chapters. We all know that it’s almost impossible to “balance” work, family, and personal time/interests at the same time — there just isn’t enough time in each day and not enough mental and physical energy to give each the same level of attention. But if we look at life as a series of chapters — with some more focused on career, some more focused on kids and family, some on ourselves — perhaps the trade-offs we make all the time can be a bit less conflicting.
Like I said, I like this advice. Many times when I feel guilty about not spending enough time with my daughter because of work, I use it to make myself feel less horrible. “This phase of my life is work-heavy,” I think, “but it won’t be like this forever.”
But I’ll be honest with you — I only half buy this argument. Read the rest of this entry »
On a good night I get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep. In a great-once-in-a-random-while night I get 7-8 hours of sleep. Most nights, I sleep for about 5 hours.
I know this isn’t enough and I don’t need any experts to tell me that. I am tired, a lot, my eyes burn, often, I need some type of caffeine to get through the day (tea, lately) and my lack of proper sleep combined with lots of other stuff (like, apparently, not breathing enough) is beginning to cause some health issues. On days when my sleep deficit is high I get less done and am less focused.
I have every reason to do it, so why don’t I prioritize getting more sleep? Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t know about you, but I am horrible about dealing with stress. It always wins. I know it’s an issue, I know it’s not healthy, and I know I should spend more time following advice about reducing stress that Karen M. generously shares over at the Catch Your Breath blog.
So when I have a minor victory and prevent stress from completely taking over my life I feel like I should share it.
As you might have seen, just in time for Work It, Mom!’s first birthday — wow, separate post on that later — we’ve launched a redesign of the site. It’s been in the works for months and as with big updates like that, it’s buggy. Some links don’t work, some images look really odd in certain browsers, a bunch of stuff won’t update when I wave my magic wand, and so on. It’s the norm with site updates and in a few days it will all get fixed, but that didn’t prevent me from nearly hyperventilating when the latest updates went up and I started seeing the bugs. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ll just come out and say it:
We rarely eat dinner together as a family.
Our daughter is three and a half and she goes to sleep at 7pm. She eats dinner around 5:30-6 — either with me or the sitter, depending on the day. If I eat with her, I’ll snack on something — but it’s too early for me to eat a full dinner and my husband isn’t home yet at that point.
My husband and I eat dinner together, but it’s often in front of the TV. We both work hard and this is our only time to unwind. I know we should be sitting at the nice dinner table, savoring our food, and discussing our day, but 70% of the time we’re too wound up for that. Read the rest of this entry »