I go on maternity leave next Monday, and although I can’t help thinking of it as a (glorious, hard-earned, much deserved) break, I know, intellectually, that I’ll have plenty to do while I’m not working. More than plenty, in fact, and none of it involves afternoons spent sipping lemonade or getting a foot massage or lovingly monogramming a stack of burp cloths as high as the moon. Nope, for however long I have off before the baby comes, all of that “extra” (HA) time will be spent preparing for the baby by finally taking care of things I feel like I should have dealt with months ago. Something tells me this isn’t unusual for working women who already have at least one child at home, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still frustrated with myself.
Read the rest of this entry

My jobs are all deadline dependent. If I miss deadlines, I miss production windows, I mess up someone else’s schedule down the line, and I disappoint clients who then might not hire me for future jobs. I’m lucky I don’t have any bosses breathing down my neck on a daily basis, but those deadlines, man…they’re not joking around.
Read the rest of this entry

Just thirteen more days until I’m officially on maternity leave from what I call my “day job”–working at home part-time for the book publishing company I’ve been with for ten years. Thirteen more days until I can ignore that email account, those Dropbox notifications, the pressing pressure that I am responsible for hundreds and hundreds of pages of someone’s near-and-dear-yet-riddled-with-typos composition. Thirteen days!

What shall I do to celebrate? Spend mornings napping in a hammock? Indulge in a six-hour Pride and Prejudice marathon? Throw a handful of confetti and then collapse in a heap because I really, really, really need this break?

Yes, I should definitely do all of those. Definitely. Right after I finish writing those four articles and proofing those ten posts and cleaning up that eighty-page file and invoicing for those three jobs. Then I will relax. I mean, I’ll relax if the baby doesn’t need me for something, because chances are he’ll arrive before all my freelance deadlines do, a situation that’s…not ideal.
Read the rest of this entry

Money is always a touchy subject, but it’s even touchier when you compare apples to apples–i.e., what your peer coworkers are making–instead of the apples-to-oranges guessing you might do of the doctor/lawyer-income couple down the block.
Read the rest of this entry