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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This week is the one in which everyone I know who isn’t a freelancer is lolling around, eating pie with their families. Of course, everyone I know who is a freelancer is also eating pie, but generally while balancing a laptop and trying to tie up all of the year’s loose ends.

Boo hoo, I know. Poor me and my pie-balancing act. Heh.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is traditionally one in which people reflect and make resolutions to be better, stronger, thinner, and smarter in the new year. For me, being in business for myself means that this is when I reflect on all of the things I probably should’ve gotten done earlier in the year. Ahem.

I also think of my accountant, and start rooting around in my purse for receipts. (I am nothing if not supremely organized.)

So, yes, there is also planning for the year ahead, but first I have to finish up this year.
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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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(Pictured here: Someone who is not me, but who appears to be experiencing a similar level of ennui.)

I’m in a slump. That’s not the same as having writer’s block, by the way—I don’t really believe in writer’s block—but it is, nonetheless, a rather unnerving state to be in. I feel uninspired. I’m tired. I’m lazy. I do a bare minimum of work and then… I sit around and think to myself, “I should be doing more work right now.”

This is not wholly unexpected. Summer was both busy and stressful (due to a variety of non-work reasons), and I pulled back from working so much because my kids needed me, and I needed a bit of a break. Now that everyone is back to school, I have more time. I feel like I should be feeling great.

Instead, I just want to take a nap.
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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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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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Four years ago my kids and I moved to a new state, a new school district, and what often felt like an entirely new world. (That’s what we get for being a bunch of yankees in the south.) My solution to the stranger-in-a-strange-land predicament was to dive in head-first: I joined the PTA, I volunteered for committees, I did my best to get involved and be there for my kids.

The result of my gung-ho attitude is that I was a cheerful participant for most of the first year, and felt bitter and burnt out by the end of the second. Our third year brought the change of having the kids in two different schools, so my husband and I each sort of manned one school (albeit at a fairly minimal level, attending meetings and such), and this past year—the fourth one—I did nothing. Nothing. Wait, I lied; I did volunteer in my son’s class for a holiday party, and last week I chaperoned a field trip. But basically: nothing.

I work from home. My schedule is flexible. Theoretically I should be all kinds of involved with the schools because I’m potentially more available than parents with conventional jobs. So what’s the problem?
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I almost have to laugh at the things I conveniently forget even though I know better.

It’s like… childbirth, for example. Any woman who’s ever done it knows it’s excruciating. Worth it? Absolutely! But even the women who go all-natural and birth at home aren’t going to tell you that it doesn’t hurt, because it does. Still, the world is filled with women—myself among them—who voluntarily choose to go through childbirth again, ever after experiencing how traumatizing it can be. We just sort of forget. Or convince ourselves that the outcome is worth the pain. But I think our memories really do soften and fade and we convince ourselves it’s not that bad.

Kind of like how I’ll happily sit down and write out a conference primer, because, after all, I’ve been blogging professionally for half-a-dozen years, and I’ve attended a lot of conferences, and this stuff is old news to me, now, plus I tend to be extremely pragmatic so I’m good at boiling situations down to pros and cons.

I’m good at picking and choosing events to attend and events to skip. But somehow I managed to completely forget that every single time I travel for business I get sick when I come back.
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In a couple of days I’ll be traveling to New Orleans for this year’s Mom 2.0 Summit, and although I’ve covered various aspects of choosing a conference, preparing for a conference, and what the heck to do at a conference, before, I’m going to do it again.

Because a refresher is always good, even for me. Also because we’ve all mostly forgotten those other posts. Right? Right!

It’s been a while since I did a sizable conference, so either I’ve forgotten what they’re like or this one is particularly packed (maybe a little bit of both?), but I am finding the various announcements of parties and gatherings and suites and things to do kind of overwhelming, to say the least. So maybe you don’t need a refresher, but I think I actually do. I kind of had to have a little talk with myself this morning about how to handle all of this. And now I’m going to share it with you.

It’s very easy to get swept up in the mindset of “Well I’m here, I should do everything.” For some people, that totally works. For those of us for whom it doesn’t, here’s what to remember.
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