Recently I was listening to podcasts again. The two series that I connect most with are “Side Hustle Nation” and “Don’t Keep Your Day Job”. I find them both inspiring and empowering. Whenever I do listen to an episode or two it gets my gears going. As in, it makes me want to take action on my goals and my future. Often though, I feel like I make a note to save that motivation for another day, when I will “have time” to do something about it. I guess I’m fooling myself when I think that “time” will one day just present itself to me with open arms. I know that I need to make a concerted effort to carve the time out of my schedule in order to achieve anything. It feels so impossible sometimes though with a laundry list of things to do, people to be.
Time for what? Well, so many things I would love to do. Most of them boil down to just a few goals: to make it possible for my husband to work from home/be home and spend more time with the family; my own personal and professional success; the desire to spend as much quality time with my daughter as possible. I think that about sums it up.
As a mother and wife who works part-time freelance at home while raising our daughter, there are many hats to wear. And one can never do any of the jobs well when trying to do them all at one time. Luckily for my mom living with us I can slack on the housework as she’s a huge help in that area. Not to mention I have a ton of help with raising our daughter and very convenient childcare. So I prioritize my time mainly on freelance and family. But there is so much more than that.
The largest struggle over the past year and a half has been deciding where my loyalty lies. I made the decision at the end of 2019 that I would quit my job and focus on being a mother. I was driving 45 minutes to and from work while my mom was raising our child. Nothing wrong there, but I wanted to raise my child. I wanted to be there to see her grow up. I didn’t want to miss out. I had begun to feel unfulfilled and uninspired in my job. What really mattered to me was my daughter. I couldn’t see trading my hours with her for something else that I did not love. After numerous conversations with my husband and his adamant, “So quit!” attitude I finally said to myself, “Well, if he’s telling me to quit and he thinks we can still pull it off (financially), then I might as well just do it. I have his support and encouragement.”
That’s not to say it was an easy decision. Everything I had known up until then was to go to college and get a degree in something marketable, then pursue that as a career and continue to go up the ladder. I can’t say I made it up the ladder at a company with a marketing department of 1, but I had pursued a job in my field, and had worked there for 7 years. I had learned a lot along the way and formed very close relationships with my coworkers who became my friends and family. Even though I felt I had more to learn and didn’t feel like my work was resolved there, it still didn’t feel like a strong enough reason to stay. My daughter was the motivation that I needed to get over myself feeling like I was making a mistake by leaving a comfortable, secure job that paid well and trading it for stay-at-home mom status. I thought some people might feel like I was throwing away a career and all that I had worked for. Contrarily, most of the people that I told said that I would never regret it. It’s as if it was said with an air of admiration. Colleagues who had also been afforded the privilege of staying at home while their children grew up said it was the most rewarding thing they ever did. These were professional people. People who were also told to get a good job and then a better job, and so on and so forth. Even my own boss, who, when I told him of my leaving the company three months in advance, could not even fault me for it. All these things aligned and the universe was basically screaming at me to follow my gut.
At first I didn’t do any freelance. I did want I had intended – be a mom. I spent some time focusing on my photography in between mom-ing and checking off some other things on my to-do list that had been totally neglected. I think that lasted 2 weeks. I began freelancing for the company that I left in order to finish up some projects. I can’t say the income didn’t feel good either. COVID hit a shortly thereafter and my freelance work slowed down a bit. But in March I was back at it. I was even in the office fairly regularly to record video for the company’s new remote training course. But after that project ended, another project came up. I found myself enjoying being a part of the work that I was doing for them through freelance. I felt guilty about it too. I wasn’t supposed to enjoy it. But it satisfied another hunger in me that being a mom didn’t always cure. You could say both personas involve problem-solving and challenges, but they are different in different ways.
To throw another wrench into it, I felt like my contribution to being a wife and home-owner was being sacrificed. I had put it upon myself to be the grocery shopper and meal preparer for our family. When I had initially quit my job and the pandemic began, the entire family’s health benefited from homemade meals, not to mention our pocket book. It was important to me to continue making the best effort to buy affordable, healthy food options. But if you’ve never done it for a household of four, you would never believe how time-consuming it is! Especially when everyone in the house likes different things. It was real work (thanks, mom for all you did for us!). I felt like Crash Bandicoot when the big boulder rolls at him trying to crush him (just looked it up – it was called Boulder Dash). That feeling of anxiety that you’re always barely being overwhelmed by everything. So now on top of freelancing heavily, feeling guilt for not doing what I intended to do by quitting – which was spend my time raising our daughter, and wanting to be able to make lunches for my husband 5 days a week and dinners for the whole family, I was feeling there was little room left for “me” and really struggling at feeling that I was doing any one of those jobs well. Wherever I put in more effort, I felt that the other thing suffered.
How do successful people do it all? Are they happy? What have they sacrificed? What regrets do these successful people that I listened to on my podcasts have? What regrets do all people have? One thing that had changed me over ten years ago was my dad dying. I was at work – my second job of the day – when he died. Why? I didn’t need that money. Granted, the age that I was at the time I probably would have been out with friends drinking if I wasn’t working, not at home with my family. But who knows. He was at a pretty bad place already (he had been battling ALS for over 2 years). Maybe I could have been there with him. Maybe I could have been there for my mom. All I know is I wasn’t, because I was working somewhere didn’t deserve my attention as much as my family did. But I had a problem with saying no to people. Something that I still work on. But after that, no job was more important than family. And I tell other people that too. There will ALWAYS be work. Some kind of work, any kind of work. It will be there. Your family and loved ones WILL NOT. And you shouldn’t have to work for a company that doesn’t support that.
Where am I going with this? I don’t even know anymore. This was much more than I was planning on writing about, and I still haven’t touched on a majority of what I was planning on writing about. My point I guess, to that side-story, was I had already experienced what it was like to put work before family, and that was one of my regrets.
It’s really important to me to find a way for my husband to also be home with our daughter. My dad was a truck-driver. He was gone a lot, and being much older than most dads my friends’ age, probably didn’t have the same quality time with me when he was home. I have a few fun memories though. I remember one time he played wiffle ball with me in the backyard. When he hit the ball and ran, I think it was the first time I had ever seen my dad run before. For some reason that memory really sticks out in my mind. I also have memories of helping him redo our upstairs bathroom. He let me put the primer on the PVC plumbing before he glued and attached it. We went to antique car shows at the park in the summers. We visited family. As I grew older we argued more. I was rude and ungrateful. Teenage years were tough for me. I can really empathize with teens because there is so much new happening, hormones, learning to navigate new feelings, etc. I don’t think at the time my parents could relate to that anymore. Anyway – a topic for another time. My point was, between a few young memories that I could pull out and squandering most of my late teenage years with him, I mostly remember missing my dad. When I was young I would write him notes to put in his lunchbox for when he’d be gone driving truck because I missed him. I don’t want that for my daughter and I don’t want that for my husband. He deserves to be in her life just as much as I do. And while he’s busy working over 40 hours a week and commuting more than 7 hours a week, I feel that it’s my responsibility to find a financial way for him to “come home”.
How do we make money quickly and effortlessly so that we can maximize our quality time with our family? In researching different ‘get-rich-quick’ ideas, it never seems that anything is very easy or definite or quick. Selling things at a decent profit on Amazon/eBay seems like a good strategy, but what do we sell that we wouldn’t lose our shirt on? Selling my photography seems like it could work, but that always makes me nervous too. I would have to actually put myself out there and self-promote. I don’t want to do wedding photography. It gives me more anxiety than I feel it’s worth. But it does seem like the sensible way to use my skills for money. But if I’m doing all this, should I have just stayed at my job instead of finding obscure ways to chase money? The idea is to make money effortlessly, right? Or if we could just find the right stock to buy into that would help push us forward? What about investing in crypto? Where could we get in on the ground floor at the right time and make an unexpected profit? Where can we save money? What are we over-spending on that could allow us more freedom financially? Should we have bought the house that we did? (To answer that one, I think yes. I love living where I live and it gives me serenity which is worth a lot to me.) But in general, I’m regularly asking myself what should I be doing differently or what is the best way to achieve having my family together? My husband and I are both fully capable of creating our own thing and working towards it. But which thing is the right thing? And I guess here is my answer to myself. Just pick one. It doesn’t have to be right, right? Because if you do nothing, you’ll achieve nothing.
I like to make websites and I like to help people. It seems natural to me with my 10 years of experience in design and marketing that I can use my skills to help others. Unfortunately helping others doesn’t feel like a get-rich-quick scheme. But it’s at least a start somewhere. And it’s something that I can feel good about. I have to believe that if I do something well for other people, that good things will come of it. I legally created my own business just a few months ago with the thought that next year I will seriously do this. I will be my own marketing company for other people. I was already doing it as freelance anyway. Things feel like they are beginning to happen now. And somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling guilty for using my talents towards work instead of making my daughter my 100% focus. Again it would not be possible if it weren’t for the help of my mom living with us. I’m sure she gets enjoyment out of it too though. My daughter is getting more self-sufficient and I think she enjoys her alone time and her time with Nanny. And when she does come to me in my office saying mommy, mommy, mommy, I have to remind myself what matters most. And she does, always. So if I have to stay up late to finish work, then so be it. If I have to order grocery delivery because I can’t spend the 2+ hours it takes to source groceries at the best prices, then that’s a decision I will make too. If laundry builds up for a while then it will get done eventually. My husband currently only gets 1-2 hours a day with our daughter during the week. And I will do whatever I have to do to help us both change that. We cherish our weekends together, though they so frequently turn into house projects, visiting friends & family, chores, freelance and more.
I think that was enough to unpack for one night! Maybe I will have some clarity soon. How did you make it all work when your children were young?
For me there was no making it “all” work when my children were young. Something had to sacrifice and be put on pause. I worked full time (plus more hours) and spent the remainder of my time with my family. Was it easy… not in the least. I had things I wanted to do for myself. But what you have that I didn’t, at that time, was the support of a spouse. If my spouse had been more available and hands on, maybe I could have found time in a week to do things for myself.
So now I’m a little older, my children are older, lots of life happened in a short period of time and I now have a spouse that encourages and sometimes pushes me to do things I want to do. It’s mentally easier on me because my kids are definitely self sufficient and can be left alone for long periods of time. Back when they were young the guilt of being away from them while working was enough for me to not pursue what I wanted.
When I look back on those days, these are the thoughts that come to mind: I was extremely lucky (and grateful) to have in home child care from someone who loves them unconditionally. In the same breath, I wished I had done some things differently. We never had enough money, we lived paycheck to paycheck and supplemented with credit cards (money was a big issue). I felt I HAD to work as much as I did to bring in money to support the family. My (ex) husband worked a lot of hours and brought in good money, with the sacrifice of he had zero time or energy for the family. He worked and took care of the vehicles and house. So being unfulfilled personally was a way of life for us. This is one of the things that led to our divorce.
Life at that time was not easy. It was not always fun, and at times it was very dark. But when I look at my children’s faces or scroll back through the pictures (for me), it makes it worth it. My children are thriving, I’m in a much better place in my life, I have a spouse who supports and encourages me, now I just have to decide… what do I want? What will add to the things I have going on in my life? What can I do and teach my kids?
There are just so many things that go into the back then and the now. I have an image of what I’d like for the future. Time will tell what happens.
Beautifully written. Thank you for sharing your unique experience. It’s always interesting to learn how other parents, especially moms, navigate parenting/professionalism/personal life. I’m sure it was a huge sacrifice to not pursue what you wanted, but as you said, you put your family and finances first. I hope you are now able to find what fuels you and with the support of your husband be able to follow those dreams!! I really appreciate your perspective. As a mom struggling with the balancing act, it is comforting to know I have friends and family who can relate. <3
I loved reading your thoughts. It was like a book. Believe me I do not like to read, but you had me intrigued so I read it all. Keep those thoughts coming!
Thank you! I hope to continue writing and see what happens with this blog. The occasional insomnia definitely helps the creativity! <3