The endless workday

JG | 10:24 PM | , | 0 comments


In my eagerness to make up for a slow start in my transition to working at home, I've become a little bit of a workaholic. I get up in the morning and before getting out of bed, check my email on my iPhone. Then I get the little guy up, get him breakfast and ... check my email again. Then, if I don't have anything to start working on for my communications job, I start researching articles for my website writing gig while the little guy plays. After lunch, the little guy goes down for a nap and the work really begins. I try to cram in as much work as I can, either taking up the full 2-3 hours with my communications job or trying to write as many articles as I can. When the little guy wakes up, I try to separate from my computer a little, but I usually check my email a couple more times before dinner. Then, depending on how the day went, I write another article after the little guy goes to bed or at least spend some time searching for article titles to checkout so they're available when I have time to write the next day.


This isn't to say that I don't get distracted by Facebook or Twitter or reading news headlines, but I do end up spending a lot of time on my laptop. When my husband commented that it seemed like I was on my computer the whole time he was home--and this is after spending a decent amount of time working while he was at work--I knew it was time to establish some boundaries. On days when my husband actually works early, I try to get everything done before he gets home so we can spend some time together as a family without the sounds of keyboard typing in the background. I've also tried to put the laptop away more when the little guy is awake, since the whole point of me working at home is to be able to spend more time with him. Last week we took advantage of the nice weather between the crazy storms and went out to play in his sandbox, pictured above. The laptop stayed inside, although I will admit to a couple of quick email checks from my iPhone.


I guess that's the dangerous thing that can happen with working at home--depending on what you do, there's not necessarily a time to "punch out." It can be so easy to spread work out in bits in pieces to the point where it feels like you're working all day every day. Here's hoping I can learn to condense my workday a little bit from now on.

The power of mute

JG | 10:32 AM | , , | 0 comments


I had a conference call I had to be on this morning and was a little worried about how it would go with the little guy running around the house. The true test of a work-at-home situation. If the little guy made any noises, not only could they be broadcast to everyone calling in to the meeting, but would also be heard by a conference room full of people via speaker phone. Thank God for a mute button on the iPhone that turns off the phone's microphone while on a call. Using this plus the speaker phone worked fairly well. My husband was also home, so he occupied the little guy as best he could. There was a scary moment, though, when I was going to have to speak and the little guy was making all sorts of noises playing with a flashlight. I had to run across the house, pray that he didn't pitch a fit over me leaving the room, quickly take the phone off mute so I could say what I needed to say, then immediately put it back on mute. Thankfully he didn't start screaming, because with our house, I could be on one end, my husband could take the little guy into a closed room, and there's a good chance his screams could still be heard on my phone. He's really well-behaved for the most part, but I think we're going to have to work on what "quiet" means.

Next week I'm actually going to be going to a meeting, so I'll be working out of the house for a whole day. Now that I'm starting to get used to the whole working-from-home set up and don't feel like I'm just taking time off, I wonder if it's now going to feel weird to be gone for a day. I'll actually have to set my alarm and put on real clothes!

Going back to the iPhone, it's a big day in this house because today is the release of the newest operating system for the iPhone. While most people are excited about the multitasking feature, my husband and I are most looking forward to the new app organization feature. Supposedly you'll be able to organize your apps into folders (I say supposedly because I haven't downloaded the update yet and my husband is currently in the middle of it), which you can then lock if you want. This means that the little guy can play with our iPhones, but we can lock away everything except the games we want him to play. No more deleted apps, no more settings getting switched, no more photos and videos ending up in the garbage. No matter how closely we watch him when he's playing with one of our iPhones, he's just too fast to prevent all the damage and he's so tall and sneaky it's hard to keep the phones away from him entirely.

The little guy in my life

JG | 8:59 AM | , | 0 comments


Since he's bound to be a major topic of this blog, I thought I'd introduce you to my son. And, no, he doesn't look anything like the cartoon baby pictured above. That is a still from one of his current favorite cartoons--the Jack Jack short from Pixar's The Incredibles. He has very little interest in TV and movies in general, but he loves the Pixar shorts. My parents got him a DVD for his birthday that contains all of the Pixar shorts and he wakes up every morning asking to watch it (he calls every movie a "disk," but usually he means his Pixar disk).

He's a funny little guy, as most toddlers are, and just turned 2 earlier this month. Besides running around the house and watching his Pixar cartoons, he loves to play outside, draw, cook (or pretend to cook) and attempting to run up to every dog he sees (real or fake) to give them a kiss.

From the ages of 3 months to just a few weeks ago, he spent a lot of time with my mother-in-law since she watched him while my husband and I were at work. This resulted in him becoming somewhat of a neat freak, which my mother-in-law fully admits is her fault. He runs up to me for cleanup when he gets something on his hands, he can't stand to wear clothes after they get a little messy, and he often runs around the house looking for things he can throw away. In some ways, I hope this continues when he's older.

This summer we have big plans for him--moving from his crib to a regular bed and starting potty training. He loves his crib and is content to play in there after he wakes up (in fact, sometimes I have to force him to get up), but he's tall for 2 and I'm afraid he's going to fall out one of these days. I know it's time, and I'm sure he'll do fine, but I'm pretty sure some tears will be shed on my end when the crib is gone. As for potty training ... well, I'm in no hurry. We'll work on it, but I'm not going to set a deadline where he HAS to be potty trained by a certain date or age.

Stay tuned for the amusing stories that are sure to come from those summer activities ...

I'm a full-time freelancer?

JG | 9:24 PM | | 3 comments

Although journalism lends itself to many different careers, I knew I'd be the person who always had a regular full-time job. My journalism professors in college told tales of their adventures in freelancing, traveling across the country to research articles, writing for different publications all the time and never really knowing when to expect their next paycheck. No thank you. There was a reason these seasoned journalists turned to teaching--although they received wonderful clips and bylines, full-time freelancing also left them with multiple broken marriages, empty bank accounts and serious nicotine addictions. That was the life I saw ahead of me if I chose to go the freelance route, and that wasn't for me. I wanted to get married, buy a house, have a family and then actually spend time with that family. All of that required a regular paycheck, health insurance and a reliable schedule, none of which were offered with freelancing.

So how did I end up here? Well, after five years of regular office jobs post-college, I took the plunge to become a full-time work at home mom (WAHM). I left a magazine job I loved because the commute left me with barely any time to see my (at the time) 5-month-old son outside of the weekends. That wasn't the type of mom I ever wanted to be. Thanks to the economy, I was left with no other options but to take a non-journalism office job near my home. The schedule was great, the commute was a wonderful 10 minutes, the pay was OK, but my degree was being wasted. So I went down to part-time at the office and found a part-time communications job that allowed me to work from home. Just a couple of weeks ago, I left the office job and now work completely from home, doing both the communications position I already had and additional freelance writing.

This blog will be part mommy blog, part working-at-home blog, part what-was-I-thinking blog. The lack of a consistent paycheck already scares me and trying to balance the mommy stuff with the work stuff has been hard. I plan to hash all of that out here, too. To all you SAHMs reading, help me keep my sanity as I spend most of my days with a 2-year-old as my only company. To those who are reading who also work at home (kids or no kids), help me calm down about the money part and figure out how to actually get some work, and not just housework, done at home. Hopefully I'll provide some entertainment and maybe offer some "here's what I did and it was great/it backfired spectacularly" advice.

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