I’m pretty sure my life would be easier if I didn’t have kids. The sacrifices I made would mostly be mine and mostly for my own advantage, not because of a promise I’d made to one of the kids or hopes I had for their future. Without children, I’d have one less (or in my case two) distraction from reaching my goals. Traveling would be less expensive, and it’d be easier to focus on writing if I only had myself to feed.

At the same time, I suspect my life may also be easier if I chose to be a stay-at-home mom. I’m not saying all SAHMs have it easier than working mothers, but I think sometimes that my life would be simpler if I didn’t have my work to distract me from keeping house and enjoying my kids.

And yet, I am so grateful and thrilled that I get to have both of those “distractions” in my life.
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I woke up Sunday morning with a headache and a runny nose. So, I did the responsible thing and resolved to take very good care of myself. I took medicine, sucked down several cans of chicken-noodle soup, drank gallons of orange juice, and slept a lot. The next morning, I woke up to the startling realization that a) I was still sick and b) I had absolutely no back-up plan in place.

I had a phone meeting scheduled for 11am and two articles due.

I was, technically speaking, kind of screwed.
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Fatigue is my nemesis. It’s the the most prominent side effect of my depression and my body’s go-to coping response for stress, illness, and just about everything else - including a long day at work. But I have big plans for myself and a lot of work to make those plans happen. So, I have to find a way to battle through the mid-day slumps, recharge, and get back to it. (And because I’m a weenie and would never sleep at night, another cup of coffee isn’t an option.)

These are a few tricks I’ve found to get over the natural lulls in my workday, downswings which I’m learning are actually important signs.
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I start my days as a mother. The drill is a familiar one to most mothers: make wake up call, encourage teeth and hair brushing, check children’s clothes for obvious stains or tears, check backpack for homework and papers that should have been signed the night before, slobber kids with hugs and kisses as they run out the door. My goal is to help my kids begin their day on the right foot, well loved and appropriately dressed. What happens next determines how prepared I’ll be for my own day.
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"Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

I want to have a soul generated by love. I want to give thanks for my beautiful life by serving others. I do. But there’s a reason you only see elderly people staffing the volunteer desk at the hospital; working parents are hard pressed to find the time for such generous acts of service. And yet, parents who find a way to volunteer have the potential to make the greatest impact with their contributions.

The very thing that makes it so dang difficult to volunteer is what makes it so crucial that we find a way: our children. Our children, who require our time and energy and money, are always watching. They are learning what kind of adults to be. They are learning from us what matters; this is our chance to teach them the value of reaching out and helping others. Sure, we can read them stories and tell them how important it is to give back, but we all know that they mimic what we do more than they listen to what we say.

But how? How do we find the space in our schedule and the juice at the end of a busy day to do more than keep our own families moving in the right direction? It’s not easy.
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We pulled into the Grand Canyon Thursday night. We were going to be camping for three nights, giving us two days to take our time exploring one of Earth’s most famous wonders. I’d worked extra hours earlier in the week so that I could unplug and enjoy four total days of driving and playing tourist.

About five minutes after checking into our campground, I got an email on my iPhone announcing a bit of a work emergency, something that demanded my attention within the next 12 hours.

My cell phone service promptly vanished as soon as I finished reading the email.

We unhooked the travel trailer from the back of our SUV, made sure no dishes had been broken in the transfer, and put the TV back in its place. Then I went hunting for wifi.
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I asked my friends on Facebook to recommend a cleanse to start my 2012 off Gwyneth style.

I made a vision board that focused on health as a pathway to happiness.

I wrote about embracing the end of the year as a time to step back and relax, to regroup instead of moving forward.

So really, it’s my own fault that I spent about three weeks battling a combination of viruses I now refer to as the Iowa Plague. I basically asked to be knocked on my proverbial butt, forced to let work and my usual end-of-month organizing slide. My colon, I assure you, is cleansed.
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One of the things I appreciate about my lifestyle - that of a digital nomad who lives and works on the road full time - is that I am pretty much the boss of everything. I decide when I’ll work, play, and sleep. I pick which projects I’ll work on and which I’ll turn down. I get to choose whether I’ll accept or negotiate deadlines. I eat breakfast at noon if I want and have no consequences for spending the entire day in my pajamas. As you might imagine, it takes a fair amount of self discipline to keep this train on the tracks, what with no one waiting to tell me what to do.

I tend to keep that train moving by focusing first on activities that pay me. Specifically, I start my day with the highest paying tasks and move on down the list according to dollar amount and proximity of deadline. This perfectly sounds logical, yes?

Unfortunately, no one pays me to brush my teeth.
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I know that there was a time not so long ago when the Internet didn’t exist. And then the Internet did exist, but it was a luxury. And then it came to our homes in dial-up, then cable, then… well, you see where this is going. We’ve come a long way since Al Gore invented the Internet and today we live in a world in which a great majority of our ideas, products and services are exchanged “in the cloud.”

I make my living entirely online. I don’t have an office and every product I make or service I deliver is digital. And yet, I am currently living without reliable Internet for the first time in almost 15 years.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. My workload is nearly the same as what it was when I was living in a house with 24/7 wifi service, but I’m getting it done in three days a week instead of five or six.

Ironically, a lack of Internet has made me more productive.

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This is the last post I’ll write for Full Time, All the Time from the comfort of anything resembling an office. This is probably also the last week I can reasonably claim to work “full time.”

One week from today, my family and I are moving out of our suburban home and into a 24 foot travel trailer RV. For the next year, we’ll tow that portable house all over the United States with our old SUV, working and living in cities and campgrounds that promise free or cheap WiFi. My kids are calling it The Biggest Vacation Ever, but I won’t exactly be on vacation. I’ll still be working - although hopefully less than full time - because someone has to pay for the campground fees and cereal.

Things, they are a-changin’.

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