The name of this column, “Full Time, All the Time” refers to the nature of my mobile and digital work life. It’s a nod to the fact that I’m always available and never quite free, thanks to the Internet. But it isn’t just my professional life that has been changed forever by my virtual lifestyle. My personal life has been both blessed and cursed by the far-reaching tentacles of the web.
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In the last month, I’ve worked in a hospital room, at my mother’s kitchen table, from a balcony overlooking a Mexican beach, and in my own living room. My work is location independent, which means I’m free of the confines of a cubicle. It also means I don’t have co-workers in the traditional sense. Sometimes this blows. But as I’ve learned in the face of heartache and disaster over the last few weeks, I am not alone. Far from it, in fact.
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Over at The Cornered Office, Mir recently wrote about healthy boundaries for a mentoring relationship. Her post was, in part, a response to another article on Penelope Trunk’s blog about what good mentoring looks like. While I was intrigued by the ideas put forth in both essays, my strongest reaction was resentment.

I am resentful when I hear other women talk about mentors because I’ve never been able to enlist the help of one myself.
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As a working mom, it’s important to me to make time and space in my life for quality relationships with my husband and kids. It’s also important to me to make time for friends. Unfortunately, most of my favorite women have a hard time finding time for friendship.

Part of the problem is that the majority of my friends work “real jobs,” which means they aren’t around for coffee or lunch dates during the day. It also means most of their evenings are packed with family fun, dinner, and household chores. That leaves nights after kids are in bed, which is usually spouse time, or weekends, which are often spent at kids’ events or running errands that couldn’t get done during the week. The life of a working mom doesn’t have a lot of room in it for girlfriends.

What are a bunch of working women to do?
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It’s not uncommon to blame children for a couple’s inability to have nice things. My husband and I, however, have no one but ourselves to blame.

A year ago, my husband and I sold just about everything we owned - including our beautiful home and my beloved shoe collection - so that we could move into an RV and travel for a year with our kids. That year of travel has come to an end and we now have room to put stuff again, but we’re not running out to replace all of our stuff. Why? Because we don’t want to go back to real jobs.

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I spend a great deal of my life trying to motivate other people to do things.  Whether it’s asking my children to pick up their rooms or encouraging writers to meet deadlines, I’m often relying on other people to do their part to make my day go smoothly.  Such is life when no man (or woman) is an island, I suppose; even the most resourceful and self reliant among us must learn how to inspire action in someone else at some point.

The question is not if we’ll have to motivate others, but how we’ll choose to do it.  Specifically, will we rely on negative or positive reinforcement?

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The summer break is over, our children are home from vacation, and the family is officially back into the routine of a dual income household with two school aged children.

Like most families, we do what we have to do to get everything done.  My husband and I rely on organizational systems that make sense for us, make compromises about what hast to get done and what can wait for another day, and practice a whole lot of cooperation in order to keep everything spinning.

You know what we don’t do?

Talk.

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Even though we are not legally married, my partner and I often refer to each other as husband or wife.  We never correct new friends or co-workers when they assume that a couple with a child and a mortgage payment would be a legally married couple.  For all intentions and purposes, we are married.  We just chose to not get legally married. 

As a career woman, those who assume that we are married don’t think twice about me having my “maiden name.”  And that’s okay.  I don’t mind when people assume we are married.  I don’t mind being called a wife.  I love Neville as a wife loves her husband. 

But there is one part of this whole “married, but unmarried” lifestyle that I never considered. What will I choose to be called as a mother?

Our son has his father’s last name just as I have my father’s last name.   But since Neville and I aren’t married, I wonder what I am supposed to be called?

Am I Ms. Roark? Miss Roark?  Mrs. Roark?  Mrs. <insert Neville’s last name here>?
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Hello my gorgeous, awesome, and totally put-together Full Time, All the Time readers.  It’s been a while hasn’t it?  I hope you haven’t forgotten about me while the fabulous Miss Britt held down the fort here.  I’ve been on an unexpected blogging hiatus.  I wish that I had witty reasons for my short-term leave of absence, but the truth is that life smacked in the face.  Then the gut.  Then push me down and kicked me some more.

In other words, I suffered through my first Summer Break as a working mom. Then right when I felt like I was getting it all in control, life sucker-punched me in the face with Kindergarten.

When my son finished preschool in June, we decided (and by “we” I mean, I thought I had the best idea ever) to let our son have a real summer.  We spent lots of time at the pool.  I spent countless hours shuttling between home and a morning-only summer camp.  We played outside with our neighbors.  Saw nearly every PG or G movie in the theaters. And my son finally found bravery to ride his bike without training wheels.  It was fantastic.

I also spent hours upon hours working late into the night to make up for the lost hours during the day. 
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I spent last weekend at a blogging conference in Chicago.  Although the conference was targeted primarily towards female bloggers, I had the honor of moderating a panel of three male bloggers, two of whom were also dads.

Although they were there to talk about blogging, it was something they said about parenting that I want to share with you.

Dads want to be parents, too.

Scratch that.

Dads are parents.

And they consider it just as much a responsibility and a job as mothers do.

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