I am really thankful for my husband this week because I’ve literally been living in a tunnel of work, work, and more work, coming up for air for just a few hours each day. I (almost) completely neglected to take care of the things that are on my weekly family to-do list — you know, things like cooking dinner, remembering to send out our daughter’s birthday invitations, or making sure that my daughter is appropriately dressed for school. (Read: No short sleeve shirts in 50 degree June weather. Yes, I live in Boston.)

And he has picked up the slack. Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

The other day a new friend, also a very busy working mom, came over for dinner. The first words out of her mouth when she came into the living room were: “Wow, it’s so clean and you don’t have a lot of stuff!” Now, let me be clear — I am not posting this to brag about my house being clean (although I admit being completely obsessed about having an organized house). It’s the second half of what she said that made me realize something.

I’ve always tried to have a very stuff-free living space. I am sure it has to do with the fact that I grew up in a tiny 1-bedroom apartment where having too much stuff wasn’t an option. It also probably has something to do with the fact that when my family immigrated to the US we could only bring 6 suitcases of our “stuff” with us and since then, I try not to get too many things to which I am attached and couldn’t leave behind. (I am sure if I went to a shrink I’d be told that this is some unhealthy leftover issue that I should deal with, but hey, I don’t have time for a shrink so I get to keep my issues.)

So our living room does have probably less than the usual amount of stuff — we have furniture, but it’s pretty spaced out, and the bookshelves have some books on them, a few vases (gifts from family and friends, who would guilt-trip me to death if we didn’t put them out), and some photos — but there isn’t too much other stuff around. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m the first person to complain about not having enough time. My to-do list is ALWAYS getting longer vs. shorter, I don’t read enough, paint enough, see friends and family enough, and oh, sleep enough. If I could just add an hour to my day it would make a difference.

Well, this is what I usually think. But I recently had a strange experience: A working day without interruptions. My husband took my daughter to school and picked her up. The babysitter (who comes after school for a few hours) met them outside and stayed outside to play with my daughter, removing even that brief usual interruption in my day when we get home from school and do the “transfer”, as I call it. I was feeling sick so I skipped my daily workout and it was snowing, so I didn’t go for my daily half-hour walk. In other words, I had a full 9 hours to work, uninterrupted.

I’ll spare you the details and get to the punch line: I got less done than on a normal day. Read the rest of this entry »

A few years back I wrote a book called The Daring Female’s Guide to Ecstatic Living. (No, the purpose of this post is not shameless self promotion. Ok, a little, you got me.) The reason I mention the book is because the entire point of it was to get women to dare themselves to do something new, scary, risky, interesting, exciting, never-thought-I-could-do-this with their lives. I felt that I’ve done a few of those things myself–and this was before Work It, Mom!, which has taught me a whole new meaning of terms like scary and exciting and risky–and wanted to encourage others to give it a shot.

One of my favorite things about writing the book is that the process forced me to look for ways to make my own life more interesting and more along the lines of what I wanted to get out of it. By investing the time in thinking about and writing the book I found that I was investing in myself and my own life. And I liked the results.

And I’ve decided to explore this idea of investing in yourself here on the Work It, Mom! Blog. As working moms we know that the first thing that often goes out the window and off the to-do list is ourselves–our hobbies, interests, big goals, even basic things like say, sleep. But this is a bad idea in the long run. You can’t ignore yourself and just take care of other people and responsibilities in your life; after a while, you’ll be a very tired and bitter person, trust me, I’ve tried this and learned my lesson.

So as we’re now full steam ahead into the holiday season that brings with it too much stress, running around, and ignoring yourself, I’d like to offer an antidote here on the Work It, Mom! Blog by writing a series of Invest In Yourself posts until I run out of ideas (which hopefully won’t happen if you offer your own suggestions) or you tell me to quit this nonsense. Every week I’ll try to come up with an activity that will focus your energy on yourself and your goals, to-dos, ideas, and yes, dare I say dreams? I’ll try to make it small and manageable because I how how little time we all have.

OK, I’m getting a bit too Oprah-like now, so I’ll stop with the self-helpish intro and get on with the first Invest In Yourself idea: Read the rest of this entry »