Up until this past August, I had been a stay-at-home mom with teeny tiny bits of part time work here and there for years.
Now, I am a work-at-home mom with LOTS of part time work. I work close to 30 hours a week, but since my off-work hours are filled with preschool runs and carpool pick-ups, I don’t really feel like I have a part-time job, because I quite literally have zero downtime during traditional working hours, and most nights I work an hour or so after the kids go to bed.
But it’s not bad. Really, I am enjoying my job SO MUCH. So much that sometimes I feel guilty about it!
I’m still trying to figure out how to balance all this, and it’s recently gotten a tad more difficult because our carpool for the big kids fell apart. Before, I would try to be done working by the time they got home at 3:30 (on days I don’t have a sitter), but now since I leave the house to pick them up about 2:15 or so, I am usually not able to be done working. This is because for the previous four hours I’ve had Jonah home with me and after I get him from school I take about an hour to do our work time together on speech and make and eat lunch. Then he’s running around playing while I am working. So it gets accomplished more in drips and drabs on these days, but I am not ready to have more childcare yet. I only have Jonah home with me for so long before he will be a “big kid” too!
Anyway, so, it’s going fine. But it is different. It’s much different than being a mostly stay-at-home mom, and the biggest difference is really that my brain is more stressed than ever. I’ve claimed “momnesia” for years and “pregnancy brain” when applicable, but now I definitely have a new phenomenon going on: “working mom brain”. Because now I am acting like I have dementia in areas both personal and professional.
Here’s a prime example: this morning I came downstairs to find that my coffee was not ready and the dishwasher was full of dirty dishes. I always set the coffee pot and run the dishwasher before I go to bed, and in my mind, I totally did these things last night. So I was confounded when they weren’t done. “I could’ve sworn I did this last night!” I said to Bobby. “Well, you did them the night before…” he offered. And it’s true. But dangit it’s like I remember doing these things last night!
Another great example: everyday I write up a few things for the For Every Mom newsletter (which you should totally sign up for, it’s an email list of our top stories for the day – so convenient!) so yesterday I was writing Sunday’s newsletter and I put in not one but TWO stories I’d ALREADY FEATURED in today’s newsletter! It’s not like I featured them a week ago. I had written that newsletter less than 12 hours before. But already forgotten that I put those stories in. Two out of four stories. Luckily I caught my error before I sent it on to be published. YEESH. Maybe I shouldn’t be admitting these things out loud…#dontfireme.
In any case, I am hoping I can get my brain functioning a little better soon. I know work-life balance is a myth. Especially when you work at home and you have to kiss boo-boos and change peed on clothes (not mine) and make snacks while you’re in the middle of something…
But if I start trying to start the car without the keys in it, or forget to pick the kids up from school – something’s gonna have to give!
Got any advice for me? Besides buying ADHD meds off the street? Because I’m not doing that.
