Almost a year ago I made the jump from working at the office full-time to freelancing.
One day a week, I pull out my old work clothes and attempt to de-Momify. One day a week I am a professional. The rest of the week I wear yoga pants.
Here is what I learned about working mostly from home –it’s (insert bad word) hard.
There are no boundaries between work and home, just blurry lines and lot’s and lot’s of compromise.
I erroneously thought it would be easier to be at home more.
Even though I used to be a stay at home (for the first six years with Kyle and Faith), I forgot how managing a home and toddlers and teens will suck a woman dry.
Kind of like the Dementer’s from Harry Potter. SWWWOOOOOSSSHHHH. Can you picture it?
Sometimes I feel like I have an identity crisis. I work outside the home and inside the home. It’s like two-full time jobs competing for my attention.
I still have to clock in the 20-30 hours of paid work so we don’t starve. But now I have no housekeeper to take the edge off. I still have to cook meals and make lunches and drive 21 trips to or from the kids schools a week. I have to maintain sports schedules and wash stinky football clothes and bring snacks. I am still a team mom-although I really shouldn’t because I am so NOT that mom)
Some weeks I manage it all and sometimes I want to sit on my dirty floor and cry.
As I sit down to write I see dust bunnies floating by –taunting me as only a dust bunny can do. My bathroom is messy and the laundry piles up and out the door.
No guest is allowed to enter the upper chambers. I can keep the downstairs immaculate but I’ve pretty much given up on the upstairs. It’s a disaster in progress.
I have friends that joke about how I can do it all. I just shake my head and drool.
A mother of a large family simply survives.
Mom’s simply work and work and work until they fall down from exhaustion and then they watch HGTV or the History Channel (because their husband has canceled all the good channels to save money) and they lie like a zombie on the sofa until their kids throw things at them and demand to be fed and taxied to the next event.
Every day I am forced to choose between keeping up with the house or making enough money to have a house.
I read the other day that although work equality has “come a long way baby,” (since the 1960’s) household management has not seen any change. This means most women now work and carry the full load of housework and kids. Dads might help more with baby and kid’s activities but guys feel completely entitled to park their butts in front of a football game and let mom serve them.
Of course I’m talking about national averages here. My husband is the exception. When he is home he always pitches in. Unfortunately, until he finishes graduate school and juggling a million pastoral duties…well you get the drift.
But even though I still feel overwhelmed with motherhood, being at home more is well worth the struggle.
Because there is a place in my heart now that used to ache and now the ache is gone.
A year ago, I missed my kids desperately and day after day being gone for ten hours at a time was killing me. (Along with the commute)
I really don’t think you can put a price tag on peace. And a mother’s peace is different from a man’s. There are certain desire’s of the heart only a woman understands.
For the first time in ages, I am home when my big kids get home from school. I am home with my toddler more often than not. I get to go to the park and the pool and take bubble baths and read books and watch Mickey’s Twice Upon a Christmas four hundred times.
I get to be present with my kids. And even though it’s really HARD it’s good.
So…although my house is dirty and I have to squeeze in work and writing assignments during nap time and at zero dark thirty, I know I am not missing a thing.
And for a modern mother it doesn’t get much better than this –identity crisis and all. (Although if anyone knows a free housekeeper…it could be a teeny-tiny bit better)
What things in your life do you need to change to find peace?
