When I’ve got several articles to write and even more to edit and traffic was ridiculous and the baby is screaming and the big kids are arguing and dinner’s not ready yet and there’s a bill from the orthodontist waiting at home with more than two zeros before the decimal point, I look at the chaos and think, “Man, this might make for a good story.”

The thing about being a journalist is that you tend to be on the look out for story ideas all the time, everywhere. And when you do get around to writing them all up, not everything in your notebook ends up in your story. And then, once your editor has gotten a hold of it, you’ll find that not everything you put in your story ends up in the published version (I’m a newspaper editor in real life, so I can vouch for this — I do a lot of trimming). What are you supposed to do with all of those ideas that you don’t have time to work on yet? Read the rest of this entry »

My home office is tucked into a little alcove near our master bedroom, a gap between my closet and my husband’s, just wide enough for a small desk pushed up against the window. My dinosaur of a computer takes up most of the space under the desk (seriously, the computer is older than three out of our five children — my Palm Pilot has more memory), and my behemoth of a monitor eats up most of the desk top. When I need to scan or print something, I have to rearrange components and put the printer on the floor.

I used to have a proper home office, back when we first bought the house, before our youngest two were born. That room became the nursery. I moved my large desk into a corner of the guest room and took over most of the closet with my file cabinets and, um, crap; then we turned the guest room into our oldest daughter’s bedroom, and I downsized my workspace in order to cram it into that alcove.

I spend a couple or four hours there every night after the little kids are in bed — which is usually about two hours after I get home from my regular full-time job. My at-home nook is quiet, and the window is nice (plenty of natural, um, moonlight, I guess). I was pleased with it for a while — and then our big kids came up for an extended visit and there I was, upstairs, in solitary, shackled to my clunky desktop and my workload when I desperately wanted to be downstairs with them. Read the rest of this entry »

Even if you’re completely happy in your current job, it makes sense to keep your resume up to date. You never know when you might stumble upon your dream job — or, in this economy, have to deal with a nightmarish downsizing. Here are a few tips for readying your resume:

1.) Update your focus. When was the last time you looked at your own resume? Chances are, it’s tailored for the job you already have. Do you want to stay in the field you’re in right now, or do you have other skills you should highlight? Either way, make sure that your most-recent experience is at the top of the page.

2.) Make it email-friendly. Nowadays, companies don’t necessarily want to wait for the postal service. Paper is proper, of course, but make sure you have your resume ready in an easy-to-email format as well. It’s not hard to do: Eliminate the graphic elements that look so good in print and stick with plain text, in a clear font, and use 12-point type. (Also, some people shy away from opening attachments, so copy and paste the text into the body of your email.)

3.) Make it active. Instead of listing your responsibilities, list your achievements. Mention specific projects and goals that you met. As the Penelope Trunk points out on BrazenCareerist.com, “Anyone can do a job. Achievements show you did the job well.”

4.) Keep it short. Remember that you’re pitching an idea to a busy person, and that idea is “Hire me!” and that person is really, really busy. If a prospective employer has to turn the page to read the rest of your resume, chances are that he or she isn’t going to bother reading the rest of your resume. Keep it to a single page.

5.) Rethink your references. You don’t have to put your contacts on your resume — and you don’t even have to include “references on request” because, really, everyone assumes they are — but you should take the time to get in touch with your references and make sure they’re still willing to vouch for you. Do they prefer phone calls or emails? Do you have their correct titles and contact information? Is their input still relevant to the jobs you’re seeking?

We’re all part of the office grapevine, whether we participate or not. I work at a large newspaper and I’ve always felt that, if my co-workers couldn’t figure out what was going on around the office, they weren’t worth spit as reporters. Also: When you work for a newspaper, you tend to assume that everything is on the record. So, I try to be careful about what say and do.

Our kids are not as circumspect. Of course, we don’t really expect them to be. But we try to encourage them to be respectful and to treat others as they’d like to be treated themselves. Right?

And then there’s Gossip Report. Read the rest of this entry »

Until about a year ago, my husband and I worked opposite shifts and traded off with the kids in the middle of the day (usually in the parking lot of our company, where we both work, but sometimes at a nearby park). A lot of times I felt like I was going straight from one full-time job to another, since I was on my own with the kids until my husband got home around 3 a.m. Here are a few of the things I did to prepare myself for my “second shift” each day:

1.) Consider your commute your “me” time. This is harder when you have kids in the car, of course, but at least part of your commute can be all yours. Catch up on the news, listen to books on tape, learn a new language — or just turn off the tunes and enjoy the silence.

2.) Carry portable stress relief with you. Dot some soothing Peace of Mind (from Origin’s Sensory Therapy line) on your temples and feel the tension drain away. Stash a portable back massager in the car (or in your desk at work) to keep the stress from building up in your body; Life Fitness offers a lightweight, battery-operated one that you can strap around your back (you can find it at most CVS stores).

3.) Keep a snack in the car. I mean something healthy that can give you lasting energy — a fruit-and-nut mix, granola bars, an apple, a protein bar. Avoid energy drinks and anything high in refined sugars — you might enjoy a rush of energy for a little while, but the crash that comes afterward will just make your “second shift” more difficult.

4.) Change your clothes as soon as you get home. It’ll help you separate work from home, and may remind you to keep your office issues from creeping into your time with the kids.

5.) Have dinner already ready. Cook in advance and freeze an extra meal or two, or prep everything and have it ready to assemble when you get home after work. Your stress levels will drop dramatically if you don’t have to worry about what to cook for your ravenous crew the instant you get home.

People who know me well often say that I grew up taking care of other people’s children. I started babysitting when I was about 11, and mothered — or smothered, as the case may be — my brothers well before that. I worked as a nanny for years during college and ran a playgroup for toddlers when I was in my early 20s. So it wasn’t much of a surprise that when I got married, it was to a man who already had three kids of his own.

Contrary to popular belief (think Snow White, think Julia Roberts in Stepmom, think pretty much any soap opera or sitcom) stepmotherhood has been neither traumatic nor dramatic for me. The kids were very young when I came into their lives — just 5, 3, and 1 year old — and on my wedding day, four years later, I exchanged vows with them as well as with their dad.

Interestingly enough, life as a Working Stepmom was different than life as a Working Mom. After all, they were somebody else’s children, right? Wouldn’t their “real parent” handle all of the rough stuff, leaving me ample time in which to work?

Well, when you’re parenting, step or not, you’re a parent. That’s really all there is to it.

For years, I arranged playdates, kissed boo-boos, changed diapers, soothed away bad dreams, packed lunches … the list of real, honest-to-goodness “Mom”-type stuff goes on and on. But things didn’t really change at work when I was “just” a Stepmom. I still worked nights, usually 3 to 11 p.m., so my colleauges never saw me race to meet a daycare deadline (they do now that I’m on days). My annual performance reviews still ended with a little tidbit about what I needed to do in order to advance through the ranks (oddly enough, they don’t now). It wasn’t that I was expected to work overtime as much as it was that I was expected to want to work overtime, because I wasn’t “really a parent.” “You can stay late tonight, right?” my then-boss once asked as he got ready to duck out early. “It’s not like you’re rushing home to see your stepkids, right?”

Um… actually, I can’t. Because, yes. Yes, I am.

Working stepmoms: Do you feel like you’re considered less of a working parent than your colleauges? Why or why not?

There are times when you’re juggling work and parenthood and more balls end up on the floor than in the air. When that happens to me (like it did today), these are a few of the things I do to try to pick those balls up and keep juggling:

1.) Re-do your to-do list. I write one out every morning as soon as I get to work, and today I looked at it and noticed that I’d written things like “clean the blue bathroom” and “make lasagna” and “put winter coats away” — things that didn’t need to get done immediately (and things that I couldn’t possibly do from work, anyhow). So I threw that list away and started over, this time writing down only the things I absolutely had to get done before I went home. The second list was much shorter, which made me feel much better. And I actually got most of it done.

2.) Cut yourself a little slack. I don’t know about you, but I don’t own a cape. (I did, once, during an brief fling with the SCA many years ago, but we won’t go there.) Since I don’t own a cape, I can’t be Super Woman. There will be times when I can’t do it all, and today was one of them.

3.) Take a break. It was gorgeous in Boston today, and I went for a walk. In the middle of the day. Even though we were a person short and work was piling up and I had a stack of stories to edit. It took just 15 minutes, but when I came back I felt recharged. Yay, sunlight!

4.) Give yourself a treat — now. The usual advice — motivate yourself by setting a goal and getting a reward when you reach it — doesn’t work for me. I find myself thinking, “Well, I’m not done yet, and that cheesecake is just sitting there, taunting me.” So, have some of the treat. A little smidge. Even if you think you don’t deserve it. Because, really, you do.

5.) Draw the circle. Someone once told me that the best way to draw a circle is to start by drawing a circle. Sometimes, the only way to get it everything done is to start at one end and keep going.

I hate to vacuum.

I checked with my mom on this one, and, apparently, I’ve hated vacuuming since well before I could walk.

Alas, some of the people who live in my home routinely put bits of whatever they find on the floors into their little mouths, so vacuuming is a necessary evil. I still try to avoid it as much as possible. Unfortunately, so does everyone else in my household, so it usually falls to me anyway.

Women may be shattering glass ceilings at work and in politics, but it seems like we’re pretty much where we’ve always been at home. A 2007 study conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University and George Mason University found that, after marriage, women take on a larger proportion of household chores than their spouses do. In fact, overall, men averaged 9.41 hours’ housework per week to 21.13 hours of housework by women, and the higher the marriage rate in the 28 countries studied, the higher the proportion of housework carried out by women. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday (April 22) is Earth Day, the 38th annual celebration of environmental awareness. While “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” has become the eco-friendly mantra of our generation, there’s more to going green than adhering to those three Rs and toting your groceries in cloth bags (though if you’re feeling crafty, try sewing your own). Here are a few other simple things you can do to preserve our planet.

1.) The next time a light bulb burns out in your home, replace it with a compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL). The newer models, like Sylvania’s micro mini CFL, get bright quickly but draw very little electricity — the 13-watt twist replaces a 60-watt incandescent bulb — and are designed to last longer than older types of CFLs.

2.) Do your spring cleaning naturally. Lemon juice and olive oil can replace smelly chemical-laden wood polishes; inexpensive white vinegar is a naturally non-toxic disinfectant (the smell dissipates more quickly than you think, too); and conventional baking soda makes a great scrub for stubborn stains. (Check out this great discussion for more green cleaning ideas.)

3.) Eliminate junk mail. Instead of just tossing those catalogs, credit-card solicitations, and sweepstakes offers into the recylcing bin, stop the junk mail from getting to you in the first place. GreenDimes will show you how for free (or, for a one-time $20 fee, they’ll do it for you — and plant five trees on your behalf). Want to learn more about combating junk mail? This New York Times article is a good place to start.

4.) Get rid of your gas guzzler. Hybrid vehicles are hot right now, but you can take transportation to an even-greener level by exploring biodiesel or raw-vegetable oil-fueled cars and trucks.

5.) Get your kids in on the act. “Design Squad” on PBS is holding a “Trash to Treasure” competition for kids age 5 to 19, with a $10,000 prize going to the designer of the best re-engineered invention made using everyday materials. For more information, check out pbs.org/designsquad

Want to do more? Get involved with the Greenies Group at Work It, Mom!, and share your ideas for Earth Day there (and here, in the comments)!

We’ve all heard about the importance of networking. It helps you get ahead in your career. It helps you build your business. It helps make life easier in general. If you’re on-ramping after a leave of absence, maternity or otherwise, your network can keep you in the professional loop. Networks like ours here at Work It, Mom! keep me sane when I feel like no one else I know can relate to what I’m dealing with as a working mom.

When you work outside the home, networking with your business colleagues is nearly a no-brainer, even if you can’t make it to the big conferences. You sit near them at the office, you run into them in the cafeteria and local lunch spots, you trade ideas after meetings, you can subscribe to industry newsletters and publications and keep up with the trends that way.

But networking with old friends? When you’re juggling more-than-full-time work and parenthood, who has time for that?

That’s why I love Facebook. Love it with big, puffy hearts. Read the rest of this entry »