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.
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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.
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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.
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When we were in Utah visiting my parents a few months ago, we drove by a Walmart and, apropos of nothing, my three-year-old son announced proudly, “That’s where my mom works!” I don’t know where that came from (kid hasn’t been to a Walmart in his life), and although it was probably just a random comment, it did make me wonder if he has any idea what I do all day while he’s at daycare.
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When my son was an infant, I had a thirty-minute office commute. When he was a toddler and I switched to working from home, I still had a fifteen-minute drive to daycare. For the two months my husband was out of work (”WAS”! HE GOT A JOB LAST WEEK!), my work day would blend right into my mom day because when the boys got home I’d still be sitting at my desk trying to eke out a few more moments of daylight productivity. When my son bursts in the door (his current bit is to announce loudly, “Hey Dad, where’s that nice lady who lives here?”), I just as often greet him with a hug as I do a “Just a minute, I’m almost done, no, you can’t sit on my lap, not right now, don’t touch that, stop, just a minute, JUST A MINUTE.”
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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.
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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.
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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:
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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.
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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.
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