(Oh, don’t worry. I’m not really going to bust out into song; no one wants that.)

For years I’ve written here about the intricacies of balancing life and mothering and work, and agonized over the time I spend building my business vs. nurturing my marriage and/or being a wholly present mother to my children. For years I’ve talked about how you get out of your business what you put into it, and how “just cruising along” might work in a corporate job, but in freelancing it means stagnation and less work.

I’m a big believer in life handing you the lessons you need to learn. And it would appear that I needed a lesson in work being less important than my family.

Lucky (?) me!
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Last week I stopped writing.

Not completely, of course. I have clients, I have contractual work to deliver. I continued writing where I had to. I continued writing about the things that matter less to me; stuff that has nothing to do with how I’m feeling or what I’m thinking.

For almost eight years I’ve maintained a personal blog, and it’s been my refuge to work out my talky impulses when it comes to sorting through things. That blog has seen me through the majority of my kids’ lives (and trials and tribulations therein), several romantic relationships (and lack thereof), remarriage, relocation, everything. Everything. Before that, I journaled. For most of my life. Writing about my life has been central to my existence for a long time.

And last week I looked at the “New Post” screen and just couldn’t do it.
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We were on the road for two weeks over the holidays; two weeks of working on my laptop on a couch or at someone else’s table rather than my desk, two weeks of trying to work less so I could spend precious time with family and friends normally so far away, two weeks of dealing with various family crises and cramped quarters and long (oh my goodness, so long) treks in the car.

I’m glad we went, but I was elated to arrive back home. Two weeks is a long time for me to be off my regular routine. I missed my bed and my house and even my desk, I found.

Of course, after arriving home at practically midnight on Sunday, Monday was a day to unpack, ask the children if they ever planned to get out of their pajamas (their answer: “No, of course not!”), and try to get the house set to rights again. Today—Tuesday—the kids were back to school and I was ready to get back into my normal routine. Today would be an incredibly productive day!
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In honor of the upcoming holiday—and because I’ve started sliding into Holiday Hosting Mode—I just couldn’t quite stomach an all-business post today.

(I hope you’ll forgive me. Come over on Thursday for some pie so I can make it up to you, if you don’t.)

I think a lot of us talk a lot about how other aspects of life have prepared us for various facets of running a freelance business, but today I’m turning that notion on its head; instead, I want to look at the things I’ve learned from freelancing that have absolutely made hosting a large holiday meal more doable, for me. (And no, this story doesn’t start with “Drink more,” although I can see why you might suspect that.) The truth is that working for myself has uniquely prepared me for the rigors of the Thanksgiving meal gauntlet, I think.
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In just about a week, I enter what my family (mostly lovingly) refers to as “Mom’s Invisible Season,” when I work until the holidays nearly twice as many hours as I do the rest of the year. There’s a method to my madness, of course; the more time and energy I put into Want Not while the entire world is busy holiday shopping, the more money I make. I can work extra hard for one month of the year more easily than I can add hours to my schedule for the entire rest of the year, so financially and logistically, it makes sense.

But.

It makes for a very stressful month. And we’re not even there yet, this year, and I’m already feeling stretched to the max and not as available for my kids as I’d like to be. And while every working parent feels like they wish they could spend more time with their kids (I mean, I assume), a huge part of the reason I decided on this work-from-home gig was precisely so that I’d be able to be there for my kids.
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We talk a lot about balance, ’round here. Work/life balance. Mother/wife balance. Mother/person balance. Balance is not an unfamiliar concept to anyone trying to manage a career and a life at the same time.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about this balance as it pertains to being a woman and solopreneur, generally, and how it pertains to being a woman and a writer, in particular.

Now before I go any further I will hasten to point out that I admire lots and lots of male writers as well, and nothing I’m about to say is designed to indicate that only women do what I’m about to discuss. I’m just going to talk about woman because, well, I am one and I know that for me it’s a big part of what I bring to the table as a writer.
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(Pictured here: Not me. But that’s totally what I look like right now on the inside.)

So it’s nearly 3:00 on Tuesday as I sit down to write this, and up until about an hour ago I was convinced that today was Monday. It’s, uh, not. The weird thing is that I had deadlines yesterday and I met them all and yet, this morning, I was sure it was Monday. Again? Still? I really don’t know.

My kids didn’t have school yesterday, so that’s part of the problem. It made the day feel Not Like A Regular Work Day, so I’m going to blame that for my temporary time warpage. That’s the first rule of parenting, anyway, isn’t it? Blame the children? I’m sure it said that in my manual.

Oh, don’t be jealous just because you didn’t get a manual. Anyway, my confusion over the day isn’t really the point here.
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(Pictured here: Someone who is a lot more coordinated than I am. But also dumb. Because wearing high heels on a tightrope is just silly.)

I’ve now been freelancing from my home office for half-a-dozen years, and I think I can say with confidence that this summer has been the first one where I felt like my work/life balance was very nearly in order. I’m not saying that it was easy or perfect, but I worked less, spent more time with my kids, and—although I felt like I wasn’t getting “enough” done, sometimes—in general my frustration level was a lot lower than in summers past. I’ve finally cracked the code, I may have mused to myself in a smug moment. I’ve got this.

Sure, a couple of times I felt a slight longing for the return to our school-year schedule and being able to up my work game a little bit with the extra time, but on the whole I felt like this summer really showed me that it’s possible to achieve a doable balance.

And so of course I promptly blew it all to hell this week.
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They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and I completely understand that. Heck, I’ve lived that. Back in the 90s, I made fun of people who had cell phones. “I never want to be that important,” I’d murmur to friends, watching blowhards conducting business transactions in the middle of the grocery store, shouting into their phones while the rest of us were just trying to find the best deal on breakfast cereal. “Who needs to have a phone with them everywhere? That’s just crazy.”

But then I had my first baby, and suddenly, a cell phone seemed like a good idea. You know—for emergencies. And then you know what happened after that, right? “Just for emergencies” became “well, as long as I’m in the car I’ll return some calls” became “you can reach me at absolutely any time at this number.” And then one day it was time to get a new cell phone and it was the weirdest thing—now you could actually check email on your phone if you wanted to. Huh. Well, that might be handy… you know, in case of emergency.

Down the slippery slope I went. By the time I got my first iPhone, I was freelancing. It was a business purchase; I would need to be reachable, even away from a computer, and while shuttling kids around to various things, it sure was handy to at least be able to catch up on email.
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Take a look around the ‘net for articles on how to be a successful freelancer, and you’ll see it time and time again: advice that either hints our outright claims that without an airtight schedule for your time, you’ll never make it. Successful freelancers are organized! They’re masters of time management! And it’s impossible to get your work done and/or live a balanced life if that’s not how you proceed.

I’ve been doing this for long enough, now, that I feel compelled to respond to this mindset with a resounding “Yeah, not really.”

It is absolutely true that you have to be organized; if you can’t keep track of deadlines, you’re not going to get very far in this business. If you can’t get things done for clients, they’re not going to hire you again. That’s obvious. But must you set a strict schedule for yourself in order to be a successful freelancer? I don’t think so.
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