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Mother’s Day is one of those holidays that I never appreciated enough before I became a mom.
In Russia, where I grew up, we didn’t have this holiday, and instead celebrated International Women’s Day on March 8th — it was customary to give gifts to your mom on that day, but the whole Communist taste to it made it a lot less personal. I love my mom and am very close with her, but somehow when we moved to America and started to celebrate Mother’s Day, it felt a bit commercial.
But no longer — it’s now one of my favorite holidays. Read the rest of this entry »
I know envy is bad, I do. But it’s kind of like butter — I know it’s not healthy, but I can’t help but indulge at times.
So here are some things I envy in other moms:
Easy-goingness. I know it’s not a word, but you know what I mean. Moms who have this great ability to just roll with the punches and not get completely and utterly stressed out by all the work-life juggle insanity. Like your kid spilling milk on your new pants when you’re ten minutes late for an important meeting and the sitter calls in sick. (Not like that’s happened to me or anything…) 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 »
Almost every working mom I know who works full-time has told me that she would love to do her job but on a part-time basis. And according to a survey that came out last year, nearly 80% of women want to work part-time. Part-time work seems to be an ideal, most coveted arrangement for working moms — one that would allow us enough time to pursue our career ambitions and spend time with our kids and families.
But according to new Australian study (thanks Elizabeth for this heads up!) the reality of part-time work is far from what we might idealize it to be. Read the rest of this entry »
I know, you’re thinking “OK, Nataly, why don’t you tell us how you really feel about networking?”
But in all seriousness, I feel that networking is a task that we — and yes, by this huge generalization, I mean we = women — overlook most often and don’t do enough of in our careers, businesses, and life in general. I know this from my personal experiences and from those of my female colleagues and friends. I am sure there are plenty of reasons for it, but this post isn’t about that. It is about what I’ve learned about networking and my desire to encourage you to make it a regular part of our routine, whatever your career or business might be. Believe me when I say it’s really good for you.
My 5 golden rules of networking:
Rule #1: If you want to succeed in your business, your career, or your life, you MUST network.
My first job out of college was for a huge consulting firm famous for the way it invested in training its business analysts. They put us through tons of training — financial analysis, client management, presentation skills, and much more — but we were never taught about networking. My next job was in strategy for a small company, where I had a great boss who taught me about business, running companies, and sales and marketing — but I don’t remember him saying anything about networking. When I took a job in venture capital my boss told me that to find new deals I had to network, but that was it. In my 10+ year career, no-one ever taught me about networking but I so much wish someone had.
I learned the importance of networking only when I decided to start my own company (Work It, Mom!, of course). My partner, Victoria, and I were introduced by someone I worked with and after a year of business lunches we decided to start a company together. When it came time to find our great team of bloggers, I started reaching out to several whose personal blogs I liked and always asked if there were others they’d recommend. I have a great group of extremely sharp and experienced people to whom I go for advice about growing my own company and I’ve met them all through networking. Networking means connecting with people, creating relationships, and expanding the circle of people to whom you can go for advice, support, career direction, job leads, and answers to specific questions. I don’t know a single person successful person who doesn’t make networking part of their daily life.
Rule #2: The best time to network is when you don’t need anything. Read the rest of this entry »
Tomorrow is Monday and while some people vehemently dislike the beginning of the work week, I don’t mind Mondays at all.
I tell you what I do mind — Sunday night. As I sit here during my daughter’s nap (yes, I know I am lucky that we get an hour break on weekends, but I’m pretty sure we’re on the last leg of it) and write out my to-do list for tonight, I really dread it. My plan is to get three hours of work in, make two entrees and lunch for tomorrow, clean up the basement, pay some bills, and make some progress on the photo book I’ve been “working on” for the last six months. I’d much rather veg out in front of the TV and eat takeout, but it’s not in the cards. Read the rest of this entry »