Posts Tagged "identity"
Yellow Brick Road
…it’s the way you think. That’s your purpose. It’s never been about what work you choose, what gifts you develop, or what niche you fill – let these be for your pleasure.Think as only you can think, which will lead to feelings that only you can feel, from which connections will be made, lives will be changed, and worlds will come tumbling into existence.
- a Note from the Universe, April 2011
There hasn’t been an awful lot of blogging going on here late. In part it’s just because I’ve been bloody knackered – Fibro is officially in relapse (ouch) and Kai is struggling (wail), but that can wait til another time.
One good thing to come from shutting up a bit is that it’s helped give me space to think. So thinking I have been, and knitting, too, as they go well together, helping, as it does, to turn great tangles of thought into something with more order and clarity, row by row. It’s like magic. There is even the beginnings of a something taking shape in my head. I wouldn’t say ‘a plan’, but it’s a something. Something to be incubated, anyway. We’ll see – it’s going to take a bit more knitting, yet, and a heavy dose of courage, too.
Anyway. I have come to realise that the biggest challenge facing me isn’t financial, it isn’t making the ‘right’ choice for a career or a way to make money, it isn’t about ‘making’ myself a future, or being better at anything.
A hell of a set of balls (in more ways than one)
There’s been a lot of talk this week in the virtual world about the ‘Mumpreneur’ – women successfully combining at-home businesses with raising children and family life. I’m not all that comfortable with the label myself, something that Sally at Who’s The Mummy? also questioned recently sparking an interesting debate. It’s not even one that particularly applies to me as I don’t run my own business. But lately I feel I am beginning to move into the realm of the ‘Work-at-Home-Mum’ and issues surrounding women, business and enterprise are likely to be ones that effect me for some time to come.
My creative writing course has started in earnest now. I have turned into that fledgling writer with a notebook and pen surgically attached, lying awake in the small hours consumed by ideas and endlessly spiralling words and images, plagued by feelings of hope and potential and doubt and worthlessness all in equal measure.
At the same time I’m trying to expand my ‘freebie’ work, getting writing experience here, there and everywhere I can. This blog is becoming more than just a pet project, it’s becoming something that matters to me, something I feel the need to invest time and effort in, with the hope that it may springboard my writing somewhere new and exciting. The Great Toy Guide is keeping me busy too which I love, opening up a whole new world of PR contacts and confusing media lingo and a different kind of creative thinking.
The irony is that none of this is paid of course. Perhaps I’m over-reaching myself even calling it work, probably ‘work’ would be more descriptive and less pretentious. But my hope is that by putting the ‘work’ in I may one day get some work without the inverted commas, probably not anytime soon, but one day.
I’m coming across like a complete douche aren’t I? I did have a point somewhere.
Oh yes. Here it is…
I had been under the extremely naive and mistaken impression that working from home would be easier than going out to work. That combining a working day with taking care of your children would be simpler, most cost effective, and magically combine the two worlds of motherhood and career woman in one beautifully harmonious enterprise.
You’re laughing right. At least, the WAHM’s are laughing…
Turns out the reality is a little different.
My days and nights at the moment are left frantically juggling Kai’s (demanding) needs and my own desperate need to write and grow in a direction other than being ‘just a mum’ (oh and with the odd cursory bit of housework thrown in for good measure). When I’m doing my ‘mum’ bit I’m thinking about writing. When I’m writing I’m feeling guilty about not giving Kai my 100% one-on-one attention. I can’t win. Oh and of course – add into the mix being so sleep deprived I can barely remember my own name and you’ll probably have a fairly accurate picture of my state of mind right now.
Lately I’ve even wondered whether Kai would even be better off in nursery for a few hours a week, that maybe I’m depriving him of enough stimulation and attention, that maybe being at home with me ISN’T the best thing for him as I had always thought it would be. But of course (it’s the ironic bit again), I’m not earning anything and we don’t bring enough in as a family to make it an affordable option.
So here I am. Desperately trying to keep all these different conflicting balls in the air. And not managing it very successfully (the ‘hoovering’ ball I dropped a while back and seems to be festering in amongst the dust bunnies under the TV cabinet).
All of which is my rather long-winded way of saying this. Mumpreneurs, entrepreneurs, work-at-home mums/dads , self-employed writers, artists, craftspeople – what EVER you choose to call yourselves. I salute you. And admire you immensely. I am only beginning to realise how hard your working lives must be – and I’m still only ‘working’ at working.
Please tell me. How on earth do you do it?
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