Sorry, that’s misleading! I don’t know what happens next. What I really meant was what is all the shite that needs to happen next, which I put off doing all last year.
To whit: my children, my husband and my house all need more attention.
When my youngest child started at school I thought it would be a good opportunity to take on lots of work – that’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Start making soap on your kitchen table, revolutionise the brassiere industry following a brainwave in a changing room, go to nightschool and discover a passion for accounting.
Work, work, work, I thought. Work. WERK! Plus in the back of my mind a faint feeling that I ought to be able to support my family on my own. Isn’t that the only true way to live as a modern woman? With no need for a man?
But then I discovered what every working mother discovers, which is that if you work and your husband works and you have no childcare, your house falls to bits and your kids eat pasta every single night for dinner. We survive, sure – but is that enough?
Things have got to change around here – and I don’t just mean our moth-eaten carpets, although yes they’ve got to go. I’m going to cook more, work less, look after my family more, see my friends more often, recycle most of the contents of my house. Read more books, go for more walks.
And now: how about you? What happens next where you are?
Love this. So many voices telling us we have to change the world and that somehow looking after the people we cherish most is a bit pathetic. Good luck to you…
Too true! Don’t want to be a slave to the phone either .
Yes, yes, yes! My youngest started school and I put myself under enormous pressure to do IT ALL. And it didn’t happen. So I’m just easing off, going to spend time with my children, enjoy time with my husband and generally not worry about the stuff that society demands modern women do. It’s all bullshit anyway and isn’t the path to happiness.
I hear you! I too need a better work life balance. I work full time and stressed to high hell and usually grumpy as F*ck when I come in from work, weekends spent with a foggy wine head when I’ve got shit loads to do. Am off work for three days this week with my 7 year old, it’s been bliss. Made some stuff from Ottolenghi last night and off to see Mary Poppins today. Defo need a good think about how to look after myself and my family in 2019. Happy new year to you x
Agree with all this. Unfortunately I work contracted hours so can’t reduce them, but here are my tips for maintaining sanity:
1) Early nights. And minimal booze.
So boring, but so necessary, as a hangover + werk + children + house = just 🤯
2) Early mornings. I am not a morning person and this is painful for me, but I work from home and I have to exercise first thing or I’d be the size of a house.
3) Get ready before the children are up. This means you have time to do reading with them/fill out some forms/sort out their Forest School kit etc before they go to school.
4) Put a wash on at 7ish so you can hang it out as soon as you’re home from the school run, before you start work.
5) Set your phone to Do Not Disturb while working, with school/family numbers registered to override the DND. Then you don’t need to worry about missing an important call but won’t be distracted by beeping.
6) Food plan and food deliveries.
Having said all that, my house is always a tip.
Julia this is great! God you are so organised, I wish you were my mum
Was thinking exactly the same thing when I read this!
Julia I’m sticking your whole post on my fridge. All I had to do this morning was return some library books and put the house back together after the holidays. I’ve spent half an hour looking for library cards and have increased the mess doing so. Now I’m here eating a chocolate sprout and that is as rank as it sounds.
This reminds me of when my kids were little my husband and me were too scared to go to the library because of missing books/huge fines!!! Still not sure if I have some fines outstanding and my eldest is now 19. In my defence I had 3 kids under 3 and have always worked. Did everything badly in wine fog. Not much has changed.
The chocolate sprout sounds like a punishment 😬
But do not put your dishwasher on and leave the house. One of my actual friends (ie not an apocryphal story) did this and her dishwasher went on fire. Plus I know of 2 other dishwasher fires….
Yes! All of this!
I’m doing Dry January. Say no more (for the moment…..!)
1) Have a baby (Not til March though….. that’s ages away, yeah)
2) Walk more, pre & post baby.
I figure due to point 1, trying to do anything else will be foolish.
Oh God, yes. I thought I’d write a monograph while I was on maternity leave (I’m an academic, so that isn’t as random as it sounds), and then I was desperately miserable at my failure to do anything other than get through the day. If I’d known that the people who wrote monographs while on maternity leave also had mothers who moved in with them to manage the childcare, there would have been less self-loathing. I did manage to walk lots, though, so I think your plan sounds brilliant. Good luck!
Hah. I was going to write up my PhD on maternity leave. No family nearby. Hahahahahah. Child is now 2. PhD is 5 1/2 and counting… 🤦🏼♀️
Lou! What’s your area? Maybe I could help you nudge it on a bit?
This is very timely, I’ve been thinking about this ALOT! I worked full time for the first 10 years of my children’s life. I was exhausted, vacant and unhappy. I gave up work as it was 4 years ago. My work now is a mother. It’s so sad that we are not valued as mothers! I have been asked countless times when I’m going to get a job, I have a job, I’m bringing up my children instead of farming them out. I want my bond to be to my children not to being a wage slave. Doing a lot of reading around this subject, recommend Liberating Motherhood by Vanessa Olerenshaw.
I have just given up work. I was working full
time with young children and then I turned around and my eldest was suddenly 9 and youngest was 5.. I went back to work when they were 4 months old and it has been a blur ever since. Vacant and unhappy sums it up and also a flustered feeling of never having things done. So I decided to give myself a break from it. I don’t know for how long but I am really enjoying my new pace of life. I cook lovely healthy meals and have rediscovered time. However, I feel terribly guilty about not earning money. Terribly guilty. In the words of Prince ‘Maybe you’re just like my mother She’s never satisfied (she’s never satisfied)’
yes I feel so guilty when not earning anything / much too. Great Prince ref xx
All of the above. Although I’m keen to work more for some self fulfilment. Putting in plans is key though. Having things to look forward to. Spontenaity is all well and good but too many weekends just monging at home. Happy new year x
I went through all this when mine were at school and started my own business (in childcare conveniently) and although I loved it, I did feel that, at times, it took over my family life. Family should come first in my opinion and being a good mummy is the most important career in the world. We’re making tomorrow’s people. Happy new year 🥳
I hear you – boring but useful is batch cooking on a Sunday as it makes weeknights much easier…..
I completely ignored my 50th, (I was, frankly, appalled). I’ve got over that and now that I’ve just turned 55, (still appalling, but not ignored) I’m having a life audit.
So far I’ve hidden my profile on Plenty of Fish. It has not been a positive experience and I’m fed up of sending breezy 1 sentence messages to men and being ghosted or men contacting me, having a fun conversation, then ghosting…….cannot be arsed anymore. This may be it for me, that I will never find anybody and that’s okay.
I have a bit more money this year, so I’m throwing everything at getting my house sorted out…………..then getting it valued, then possibly selling it.
I’ve finally completed a Transcendental Meditation course and am working on reducing my blood pressure, I do have to move more and stand up to work when I’m on the computer.
I will look into living and working in a more remote part of Scotland, somewhere I’ve always wanted to go to.
Spending more time with my increasingly frail mum.
Trying to be more meatless during the week, (weekend? all bets are off).
I don’t have children or a chap, so my life, to a certain extent, is easier to manage, but it has it’s own set of difficulties, (nobody to share stuff with, I have to do everything, nobody to look after me if I’m ill!).
After spending Christmas with my sister and her family I can only salute mothers everywhere, it’s it dirty job but you do it and do it well x x x
I’m going to faff less. Yes I work full time in an office and I have three kids so you would think there wasn’t much time for faffing but you’d be wrong! If someone did a time and motion study on me they’d find me endlessly walking round the kitchen wiping surfaces that have already been wiped. It’s flipping mad. So my plan is to leave the house to rack and ruin and then do one massive clean up/wipe up at the end of the day rather than endless wipe/wipe/wipe shit. I’ve also removed social media from my phone during the weekends and have vowed to actually speak to my children (who are on the cusp of teenage silence and so I’ve possibly only got 2 years at most left of them speaking to me). Also listening to Audible on my dog walks. For the house I’ve sacked the cleaner (I KNOW) and do The Organised Mum method (she’s on Instagram and is bloody brilliant and it works) every morning and then Joe Wicks Youtube for 20 minutes before they all get up. The extra cash from the cleaner leaving pays for the dog walker which helps assuage any guilt from leaving him on his own.
We spent New Year with some friends who have 3 children at boarding school and I spent the entire time thinking ‘What on earth do you do with your time?’ and being dreadfully envious which is a total unless waste of time so I’m vowing to make the most of my own children and carve out little bits of time when I can. As my mother says, I’ve all the time in the world to have a gorgeous house and garden when they have left home.
Julia has nailed it. One thing we did is, if you can/have one, rent out your driveway and use the money earned to pay for a cleaner. Has given me back at least three hours a week so I can now spend more time at weekends with the kid and the husband. Now to find the magic person to do the cooking and the washing (and the means to pay for it!).
Hi Esther, your plan is life as it should be – sadly nowadays it’s overlooked, even looked on as ‘less’ to do that full time job of running a house and family. Yes, it’s full time. Any job means so many hours a day and then home. So your job at home does include getting out for yourself too – when you manage to sign off!
The only way a woman can have a balanced life while working full time is to have a housekeeper. Nannies only sort out children.
Enjoy your year and thanks for all the great reads. I love reading your stuff.
PS – how is that chair working out? The one you bought Giles, similar to the Eames one…
it’s working out so well! I recommend x
It’s cyclical, isn’t it. A period of retreat into the personal, domestic and intimate, followed by a period outside in The Big World, then the efforts and stresses of that requires a retreat back etc etc.
Certainly for us mothers who are more or less at home and more or less in charge of the domestic sphere there’s a need for retreat and catching one’s breath. More outside the home = less inside the home. It’s a zero sum game as many of us have partners who can’t/ won’t step in or don’t step in in the way we’d like. Or (and I’m saying this just quietly so Sheryl won’t hear me) maybe we don’t want to be in The Big World because to commit to a Big Career means passing on small but important things, like making your home comfortable, managing the endless tide of stuff, or knowing who’s BFFs with who in year 3.
I’ve been on an intensive project for 3 months which has been extended by 3 months. It’s good, interesting, well paid, meaningful work and I’m really looking forward to April when I can retreat back a bit after a foray into The Big World.
PS) I agree with everything Julia said.
Your plans sound really lovely. I have done just a bit of that in recent years although only relative to previous – still working full-time but was more disciplined about keeping to office hours/rarely weekends/etc. Slightly depressingly the house is still falling apart, the kids are still neglected, and the husband thinks he is last on my list of priorities (he may be right). On the plus side, the cat is sure that I love him. In the meantime, I have fallen behind at work and watch younger and better colleagues over-taking me at speed which is slightly humiliating. So now I am faced with a choice. Ramp it back up and let home life suffer or continue to ramp down and suffer the consequences to my ego. It’s tricky. But I may just be in a particularly brutal January 3rd first day back at work grump.
Spend more time with my kids.That’s basically it. 2018 was a real…clusterfuck for doing far too much (masters, house move, working from home, illness and surgery) and I miss them and they are GROWING UP without me NOTICING.
I’m a stay at home Mum. It’s the right thing for our family as my husband works bonkers hours but there is a bit of boredom to it. I’ve got lovely friends, fulfilling life mostly but I feel a bit pointless sometimes. I know i’m not really but I feel judged by society for not contributing enough. I know my working friends have it much harder as they do what I do plus work full time. I’m aware I am lucky that I can be at home for our children and our home life is mostly under control because I am at home but there is a bit of a personal price you pay.
Claire yes there is. You need something for yourself, some creative life – whatever that is – but having it and not letting it take over when you have chosen to/can afford to stay at home is a tricky one. Plus the school day is very short. And school holidays come around basically once a fortnight.
I’ve been thinking a LOT about what constitutes a Good Life, and it seems to me that starting with work and making everything else fit around it in ever smaller increments is total madness for EVERYONE. We should start with a rounded look – work, parenting, friends, our relationship, creativity, pleasure, meaning – and create a plan to make it all work. One which means we work to live (perhaps reducing our income to make time for other pleasures) and acknowledges the interplay between each sphere of activity. So – I know I became better at negotiating at work when I was constantly refining my skills with a toddler at home. I know I have better ideas for projects when I make time for a walk on the heath or to look at paintings. Whatever your thing, we’re better when we have variety and change and pleasure and interest.
As an aside, THIS is exactly why I started my job-sharing project. Because “having it all” is bullshit. But so is the idea that we have to trash our careers to make everything work for everyone else. It is genuinely the only way to have a ‘big’ career and not collapse in a pile of misery, washing and empty wine bottles. If any Spikers want a chat then get in touch – happy to do some 1-1 calls if it helps people out.
Financially I need to work. I’m needed for the mortgage and bills. In fact, as of next week I’m working full time, from home, whilst juggling three children solo (my husband works away in the week). I feel pretty Woe Is Me about it all, but at the same time, rather distastefully, I like earning money. I like having it in MY account. I like knowing I can feed us if the rug gets pulled, because sometimes the rug gets pulled. it makes me feel secure in the event of the shit hitting the fan.
Six years ago, the shit did hit the fan, my husband got made redundant, fell into a slump of depression and didn’t work for three years. The last three years has been him retraining and building up a new business. My job became crucial but I lived, to the max, the cliche of the working mother: no one getting the best of me. My children didn’t get the best of me; my job didn’t get the best of me as I was often having to cut corners because of child/home commitments, and I didn’t get the best of me. It was as shit as it sounds, but I hang on to work as I’ve lived the awake-all-night-every-night worry of whether we are going to lose the house. So I’m going to suck up working full time from home and the reality that this will make me less available and less joyful as a mother.
I don’t know if it’s selfish or sane to say that in 2019 I’m going to look after myself. It sounds awful that in the face of working full time and not having enough time to craft and throw leaves in the park with my children, I’m going to focus on me first. Selfish, but my instinct is that self care will save this whole family from burning to ashes. My husband is trying, but I am the one keeping all of this afloat. So run, do hot yoga twice a week, weights in my garage with music pounding, read, think, write, google beautiful things, daydream about the utterly pointless, love my friends. I think if I find happiness then I’m a better mother and wife and friend.
I think aiming for a better balance, and happiness, however that stacks up for you, is a good thing. And I think that’s easier to achieve when you slow down, and pause to do lovely things, in stolen moments, once in a while.
Tess what a lovely comment. Love to you all xx
I am so reassured. I am not alone. A young guy at work told me today that his wife is probably going to go back to work part time until the kids are about 10 when it gets easier…..I was momentarily stunned into silence… driving home I reflected on the conversation and focusing on the positive (one of my aims for this year) I came to the conclusion I must make the family/worklife balance look easy. From where I’m standing running around between the children – One tween, two teenagers and a 20 something who all still need thier mum in different ways, a mother in a nursing home a father who needs entertaining, as well as my own projects is bloody hard work and I am a walking juggling artist and not a very good one at that! I don’t know how I manage to fit in work to be honest but we do!
This year I will attempt to…
+Focus more time on each child and there individual needs.
+Finish projects in the house. We have a number on going!
+Cook more and prep
+More time with friends
+Challenge care system for the elderly.
+Finish work on time
+Positivity rules
Let’s do this!
Some very reassuring comments above. It can be a draining, tough, isolating gig – working from home whilst also attempting the housework / kids / life admin / exercise / time for self / time with other half, guilt-fest.
My intention (rather than resolution) is to gradually ‘Marie Kondo’ the shit out of all the rooms in the house, cook better meals and get out of the house more. Good luck everyone!
After 16 years of working in a really stupidly busy job, while having three children – I’ve stopped. I work from home, I run my own consultancy. I feel like the spider in the middle of my own web. My children are older (second year uni, year 13 and year 10) and I suddenly understand them more, looking in from the edge of their days. I sit in my study, and hear them come in from school, say hi to the cat, drop their bags in the hall, raid the fridge and then trudge upstairs. I just get how they are, without the need to ask questions. I am cooking slightly nicer suppers, the evenings are just better. I am better. My daughter at uni Facetimes me in the middle of the day and we have good chats. I have also fallen in love with the wreck of my house. God I hated it before: always a tip, bust lightbulbs, make-do furniture. I was never here long enough to appreciate it and invest in it and now I can. Makes a nice change from the ball of stress falling through the door at 7pm with a roast chicken in my laptop bag.
That sounds a spectacular plan, life’s too short to wish you’d spent life doing something else with it. My plan is to work less, stress less and live more 🙂
I went back to work when my child started year 1 and was supergrateful to two guys who did take me on after a very long break. It’s been so hard even though I’ve sorted out logistics and we are managing. The whole thought about needing to be able to provide to my family singlehandedly is so true! No chance of it here because me working full time is the only way for us to afford very good private education in a black spot with no decent schools. My dream is to earn what I am earning now working four days a week because a full time job kills any time with family, friends and children.
It is definitely harder, though more straightforward (no choice) when you HAVE to work. You HAVE to work to get them to a good school so everyone just has to knuckle down and manage. But I know we are all sending thoughts to the work cosmos to get you down to 4 days.
My children turned 4 and 2 last week so my oldest isn’t even at school yet, but I am already in a panic about what I’m going to do once they both are. I can barely justify staying at home with them now really. Yes, my husband works away Monday to Friday but I see several comments above from people in the same position who still work. I actually love being at home with my little children (for now) and feel very lucky I can do it but I did have a very disconcerting night out with my uni friends just before Christmas- they are all impossibly clever and successful lawyers and academics and general high flyers. More than one of them said ‘really?’ With a very surprised face when I casually said I’d probably go back to work when the boys were at school. More than one of them said ‘have another baby instead’. All but one of these women have children of their own. They all work. Long hours. We all went to uni together. What is it about me that says I’m never going to work again, I’m just a mum? Lovely personal identity crisis right before Christmas! But really, I don’t know what I’m going to do. Elaine x
Ps. These are all lovely women who I’ve known and loved for almost 20 years. No one was trying to make me feel bad, I did that to myself.
Elaine you’ve nailed it. I’m sure they ARE all lovely those girls but they are all a crisis waiting to happen, just not now.
So true cx
I have really enjoyed reading this post and all the comments. Always good to know you’re not alone when it comes to all this stuff. At the risk of sounding like bloody Andy Headspace, one of my aims for this year is to try to be more in the moment. Like everyone, I have too much to do (two kids, PT job and a PhD) and I find that, even when I manage to make time for the things I want to do, I wreck it by constantly thinking about the next thing- checking my phone for work emails when I should be talking to my kids, trying to combine laundry loads with writing up research, sneakily updating my Ocado order in the office….it makes me feel as if I’m always behind, while somehow simultaneously rushing through my life without really noticing any of it.
Thanks for this, for legitimising the feeling that it’s ok not to do it all. So glad to read the reassuring comments, it’s good to know others feel the same. I also got on the treadmill of feeling the need to prove (to myself) I could bring in enough to be independent and by god it’s exhausting. After agonising for months and months I resigned from a job I’d spent years gaining experience in, with no job to go to. Serendipitously something popped up which fits the bill (less stress, fewer hours and obvs, less cash) so am hoping that will bring the balance back…
Oh, and also two more practical things I’m doing:
1. Someone recommended a brilliant app to me, called Reading List. It’s just somewhere to record all the books you plan to read/are reading/have read. You can enter the books manually or by scanning the bar code. I really want to read more this year- last year I found I kept buying books which never got read and ended up just being put away on a shelf and forgotten so I’m hoping this app will help me to keep track. Also hoping that it will stop me impulse-buying books as I can just add them to my Reading List app rather than my Amazon basket.
2. I want to give myself a kick up the bum when it comes to cooking- I used to love cooking and made a huge effort but these days it all feels too much like hard work, we eat the same twenty meals over and over again, and sometimes even the mental effort involved in thinking what to feed everyone seems too much (I don’t know whether anyone else finds themselves staring at a blank sheet of paper for five minutes before managing to dredge up the idea “shepherd’s pie”?) Anyway, my plan is to cook every recipe from How to Eat over the course of the year- all the coverage last year reminded me what a great book it is and I still have my old copy which I got for my 22nd birthday, when I used to find cooking a joy. I’m not going to blog it, Julie and Julia-style, I’m just going to cook it and eat it.
TWENTY meals?!?! we eat the same five things. you are ten steps ahead of me xx
Exactly my thoughts! Twenty, im so impressed.
The cooking challenge is such a great idea. I use the macaroni cheese recipe all the time from my old copy but rarely venture any further. I find cooking for children and family such a chore that the love of it has gone so I need to give myself a kick up the bum. Will you keep us posted somehow?
This is so timely Esther. Massively struggling with this issue right now. I used to have a full-on job (barrister) but stopped when my children came along because the profession simply doesn’t operate with any part-time roles (I was doing long trials practically back to back – funnily enough it doesn’t work if you only come in for 3 days a week of a 6 month long trial!). Also, I had put my career before everything, consequently leaving it pretty late in life to have kids (I was 40 when my youngest was born) – I just really wanted to be at home with them. Plus, husband works mad hours and couldn’t/can’t pick up any domestic slack. But my youngest is now part time at pre-school and I feel enormous pressure now to do something “more”. I think it’s mostly pressure I put on myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still get all the questions from everyone else about when I going back to work etc., to which I find myself trying to justify why I am not yet “back in the game”. I have found too that I have some resentful feelings about my husband’s career having gone from strength to strength since I have been at home with the kids (as much as he is the one who put in the work to get where he is, I don’t think this temporal juxtaposition is a coincidence…!) I find myself thinking “that could have been me”, yet I am of course more than well aware that his moves forward career-wise benefit all of us enormously, so then I feel guilty for thinking such petty thoughts! It’s such a tough one. I wish I knew what to do. So helpful though to read all the comments here and know that i’m not alone though. Thanks to everyone and wishing all of you the best possible 2019 xxx
Louise, I feel exactly the same. Definite resentment about my husband doing well at work, which is mad as obviously we all benefit from that. He works long hours and travels to big, important meetings. Meanwhile, I am at home, which I have chosen and want to do, and yet I live with this constant feeling that I should be ‘leaning in’. The first question anyone asks is what I’m doing for work and when I’m going back to work. Am comforted that I’m not the only one who feels like this.
Think I’m older than most of the people commenting here but it brought it all back and you have all contributed such excellent insights. I left a full-time job to move to a different city for my husband’s job. I loved my job but was happy to have an excuse to take a break, to be honest. I had three boys, aged 10, 7 and 5, and wanted to spend more time with them, to be able to hang around in the playground a bit, chatting to other mums and basically to feel I was more or less on top of things. I then had my fourth son so was in no hurry to look for a job. By this time my husband was very busy and while he’d been reluctant to have a stay-at-home wife at first, he said he appreciated having someone at home keeping it all going. My youngest is now at university and the older three all have their own lives (one is married). I have no regrets at all about staying at home and think I have a good perspective on it because I was a working mother for ten years. I have friends who’ve carried on working and friends who’ve stopped. There is no right or wrong way; you have to do what’s right for you and your family. Being at home was right for mine at the time.
Having just turned 30 and pregnant with the second child, I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to balance being the sort of mum I want to be for them, while progressing in my (relatively) high flying career and managing to stay fit/have sex with my husband/not go totally bonkers. So i’m ignoring it. My New Years resolutions, after having a healthy baby in March, are to throw out all tupperware that doesn’t match so I only have one set and all the lids fit on all the boxes. And to put clothes that don’t need to be washed back into my wardrobe immediately rather than putting them on the floor and putting them away later. And hope that a solution to all the bigger stuff presents itself in time…
This feels alarming… my kids are 2, and just-turned-1. I work 4 long days per week, and had been hanging my hat on the idea that as they get older, it gets easier (to be fair, it has got easier since the days of juggling two under two). I’ve been treating my life as temporary: “once they’re older, I can get back to exercise / hobbies / reading / creativity / progressing at work”. I’m getting an insight into quite how wrong I am…
My resolution for 2019 was to be happier, not raging lunatic happy, just to do things that made my life better.
I follow the same Organised Mum Method as a previous poster so I can do a manic 30 mins of proper housework a day and then not do any at weekends. This means more weekends going for massive walks or doing anything other than dusting.
I work full time and am studying too so I am strict on my work hours and have to make a real effort to exercise (sporadic but makes me happy).
I’ve deleted more than half the people I followed on Instagram because they don’t do anything to make me happy or teach me anything an I’m in bed reading before 10 every night now.
The trick is to work out what you need to be happy. You don’t have to do everything and you can change your mind if it’s not working.
Someone once told me that as the kids get older they don’t need you less, they just need you at less convenient times. This is becoming true already with my 5 and 8 year olds
I worked crazy hrs and long commute while doing night school alongside, had first child very young. Climbed the greasy pole only to realise things had fallen apart at the seams. Had second child when first was 11 and never went back to work….youngest is autistic and I got diagnosed with ME. Took me soooo long to get over not contributing financially but now see that I enable my husband to work in a way that would be impossible if I was still doing the same hrs I used to.
Sometimes it’s really important to slow down and focus on what actually matters. I don’t need facials and handbags, I need a happy functioning family and to be in a state of health that enables me to appreciate that for what it is. I’m so lucky that we can manage on one salary. ..I’d have scoffed at the house size ten years ago, but it works and we are well. Happy and we’ll. That’s all that matters. And camping :)) flights and autism are a no!
Life is not a race to the top…when my dad died it really made me realise just how much the small things matter the most.
I really empathise with experience as my middle brother who is three years older than me (he’s 32 now) is quite profoundly autistic. My mum managed to go back to work (she was a nurse) only because he boarded four nights a week at a lovely school for children with autism called St Johns (in Brighton, I think it’s still there). When he first went it broke my and my eldest brothers hearts, but now as an adult I can see it was the best thing for everyone. We never did the camping thing (my mum wouldn’t have stood for that, and I have to say I feel the same as we’re both clean freaks) so it was to Devon, or Cornwall, or Wiltshire every year (once we made it as far as Northumberland!). So I know what you mean about flights! But also I think taking an autistic child to a foreign country where everything is very similar but also ever so slightly different must be very disorienting for an them (although depends on the individual) . Stressful for mum and dad definitely.
Sorry that went off at a tangent!
My children are now grownup and something I learnt from my own experience if that teenagers sometimes need a parent around out if school hours at least as much as when they are young. It is easy to assume that once they are school age you can ‘get your life back’ but actually they can need a lot of emotional support and if they go a bit wild (one of mine did) it’s very easy for things to escalate when your attention is somewhere else. Not suggesting women can’t work but personally I was never able to commit fully to my previous career once I had children. Husband also ran his own business and he now acknowledges that he wouldn’t have made a success of it if we can constantly had to negotiate who dealt with domestic emergencies as they arose. Of course now the children are finally happy, successful independent adults my parents have turned into my children ha ha.
I’m three months pregnant with baby number two, and being signed off work to puke and cry non-stop for the past couple of months has given me a lot of time to think about this stuff. We can’t afford for me not to work (my husband and I each work a four-day week so we can have a weekday each with our almost-three-year-old), but I’ve realised how much I’m looking forward to my maternity leave and a shift into domesticity and family life. I work with a lot of wildly ambitious people, both those younger than me who don’t have kids and are more free to work mad hours and focus on their careers, or people who have full-time nannies for their kids and are all about work during the day and evenings too. I definitely feel valued there (I’ve recently been promoted), but I’m very aware that my attempt to find a work-life balance is really not the norm in my industry. It’s going to be even more critical when I’m back at work after maternity leave with another kid in the mix. My husband and I are realising that our priorities will keep changing as our circumstances do, and that it’s critical for us to keep looking at what we’re doing – who’s working, how much, and is everybody happy? – to check that it’s still the right choice. So lots of questions rather than answers at the moment, but it feels liberating to look at our options.
I am going to do more voluntary work. I feel that using my time when my daughter is at school is about meaningful occupation rather than this obsession that everyone should be working regardless of financial circumstances. I do the house wifey bits, am exercising more (and not feeling guilty using the school day for this – we have an only child and I learnt recently the SINGLE most important thing to help yourself live longer is exercise, and I feel the pressure to be around as long as possible for her) and now plan to keep work skills current, fill some hours and be community-minded by volunteering. There is such a need for it and so much choice…direct client work, marketing, fundraising, PR, strategic planning etc
I try to see all this as a life engineer The iron triangle concept for engineering things is speed, cost and quality. You cannot have all three. You can make stuff quickly and cheaply but the quality will be rubbish. You can make things of high quality and fast but at high cost. You can make stuff of high quality and low cost but you have to sacrifice speed. The goal is to find the balance point between all three.
The iron triangle of life is time, energy and money If you work full time, you have money but no energy or time. If you are at home (with kids) full time, you have time but no energy or money. The trick is to find your balance point between them. Look at what is most important to you and place your pin inside the triangle.
Margaret the solid logic of this is flawless x