My husband had three job interviews last week, and although no official offers have been put on the table yet, let’s just pretend everyone thinks he’s as wonderful and accomplished as I do and that in the next few days he’ll have his pick of positions.

Aaaaahhhh. So that’s what it feels like to breathe again.
Read the rest of this entry

I’ve read everything anyone anywhere has ever said about working from home.

“Create a dedicated office space!”

“Get dressed every day!”

“Take a shower!”

“Put on makeup!”

“Get out and talk to real adult people, even if it’s just the cashier at the Starbucks drive-thru!” (No offense to cashiers at Starbucks drive-thrus. You make the world go ’round.)

It’s funny that so many of these Helpful Tips are hygiene related (funny cuz it’s true) and that, together, they make us WAHMs out to be a bunch of unkempt cavewomen who, save for the civilizing grace of the revered drive-thru cashier (and her gift of caffeine), are assumed to be perpetually one eight-hour shift away from losing our ability to walk upright and speak in full sentences.
Read the rest of this entry

I have a hard time letting people help me, but lately I’ve been fantasizing about what it would be like to have a personal assistant I could delegate all my less-than-desirable tasks to.

A basic list of responsibilities might look like this:
Read the rest of this entry

In the comments to this post about career ambition (and my near-complete lack thereof), WIM reader Elaine asked this question:

How do you measure success at home? Other than seeing the kids and spending time with them, where is the satisfaction?

GREAT question. TOUGH answers.
Read the rest of this entry

It’s a touchy subject, but I’m going to try to write about it in a non-judgey, not-telling-you-what-to-do, just-thinking-aloud type of way.

Say you’re unemployed. Say you’ve been unemployed for not days or weeks but months, and maybe even more than a year. You’re diligent about applying for positions, you follow up, you wear your shiniest shoes to interviews but still can’t find work. It sucks. It sucks HARD. It’s a hit on your self-esteem, it insults all the effort you put into school and at previous jobs, and it’s especially terrifying if you have a family to support and don’t know where you’re going to get the money to pay for groceries.

It’s a down economy, times are tough, unemployment is rampant, and yet…at what point do you stop blaming the market and accept that the problem might actually be…you? I’m not talking about not being worthy of a job or not a competent and quality employee. I’m talking about the ways in which you might be limiting yourself, say by narrowing the definition of What You’re Good At and/or What You Can Do.
Read the rest of this entry

There are so many things that make working from home better for me than working in a remote office, but during this pregnancy I’ve found myself missing some things I enjoyed while I was an in-house employee during my first pregnancy:

• singing to the baby during my solo car commute
• wearing my cutest maternity clothes instead of my loungiest, schlubbiest ones
• fielding questions from curious coworkers
• getting at least a little exercise every day, even if it’s just going up and down the stairs between my desk and the copier
• not having constant access to an entire pantry of bad-for-me food
• office drama!

Stuff I don’t miss? The list is strikingly similar:

• the excruciating drive home during the third trimester, when my ribs felt ready to crack open
• the hassle of finding a cute maternity outfit every. single. day.
• fielding awkward/invasive questions from curious coworkers
• not having constant access to an entire pantry full of yummy food
• missing out on the cocktail part of after-hours cocktail receptions
• the privacy of my own bathroom, and never having to wait in line
• office drama! (OMG)

Did you work in an office while you were pregnant? What did you love about it? What did you hate?

Move up the ranks. Earn more money. Get a better job title. Bask in your success.

That’s what I’m supposed to be doing, I suppose, but as an editor and writer, I’m happy to keep doing just that: editing and writing. I don’t want to become an editorial director and spend my days delegating tasks and parsing budgets instead of wrangling semicolons and enlightening a new generation of authors on the function of the en dash. As an online writer, I don’t want to oversee a team of underling writers, scheduling their posts and sprucing up their headlines, I want to WRITE. (Besides, I’m terrible at budgets AND headlines.)

This doesn’t mean I don’t want “better” jobs (I use quotation marks because “better” can mean a variety of things here), and I certainly wouldn’t balk at getting paid more, or even being recognized for what I do well with a plaque at a fancy-dress dinner. And yet…I’m also mostly okay with how things are going (and have been going for years). The status quo is a.o.k. by me.

So then why do I feel like my lack of ambition is a bad thing? Why do I think there must be something wrong with my wiring that I don’t want to move up the career ladder and take on more responsibilities and seek greater rewards and recognition? Am I selling myself short? Am I just scared?

The answers here are Yes and Yes, but there are other factors at work too. I DO have ambition–it’s just more for homelife instead of worklife. And in order to reach those personal goals, I’m perfectly happy to let my professional goals slide. Being a success at work is lovely, but what makes me happy is being a success at home, as a wife and mother and friend. But I have goals, I do! They’re just more often things like Sew Pillows for the Couch instead of Win a Pulitzer for excellence in journalism.

Are you ambitious? Where does it show up more–at work or at home?

Kids or no, I like work, but I also HAVE to work (financial, mental, for the good of misused apostrophes everywhere, etc.), and that’s just the way it is. Because I’ve never had much choice in the matter, I tried not to waste time dwelling on the topic when my first son was born. That I would go back to work after maternity leave was a given, and beyond that I just did my best to stay confident that the details would work themselves out.

Ah, details. It’s true that the devil’s in them…
Read the rest of this entry

I use the phrase “dream job” a lot, mostly in reference to what I do (editing and writing) but also (and more often since having kids) to describe how I’m able to do it, which is part-time and freelance from home, with MAJOR flexibility. It’s the right job for me, and the details are a nearly perfect match for my life right now; the only thing I say about my career more often than “dream job” is “lucky.” So, so lucky.

But is it what I’d always imagined? No, not exactly.
Read the rest of this entry

Once upon a time, there was some drama at the office that consisted of three of my coworkers and me having what I’ll call here for the sake of propriety “communication issues.” Basically, one of the people was feeling picked on for screwing up something important, and although from my perspective it didn’t seem like anyone was being out of line in her opinion (we just wanted to acknowledge the mistake in hopes that it wouldn’t be made again in the future), the whole thing nevertheless turned into a bit of a low-grade bitchfight (to throw propriety aside), a devolution that I found completely ridiculous because (a) the initial problem had been addressed and solved and (b) I had bigger things to worry about so (c) LET’S MOVE ON.
Read the rest of this entry