This burning topic has been niggling at me for awhile and I am going to use this blog as a forum to educate everyone a bit on what it is like to work from home (for myself to boot). Hopefully I can get this out to a wider audience over time.
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Guess what? I work from home. This should come as no surprise to most of
you, yet lately I am getting the impression that people don’t really understand
what working from home means. For me,
working from home means running my own company straight out of my house. Although I do conduct work outside of my house,
a whopping 95% happens in my home office.
By choice. And I like it (most
days).
Yet, working from home for me also means juggling the
ongoing and constant demands of life and family, including two small children,
while balancing work-life requirements. All
working moms can relate. But for some
reason just because my work occurs here in my house (or because I set my own
career path) I get the impression people think my work isn’t ‘real’ work. I mean, don’t I get to set my own hours…work
when I want to…decide how I spend my days? To a certain extent. Yet I have a real job, with real clients,
and real timelines and deadlines just like everyone else who holds a job. The accountability is extremely high and things
don’t always happen when I want them to.
I have to find creative ways to get my work done around being a primary
caregiver to two young kids -- driving them to and from school and activities,
attending their events/parties/shows, cooking almost all the meals, doing
almost all the cleaning, shouldering the majority of errands/tasks, and trying
to enjoy some down time (once in a while).
I work odd hours squeezing in work demands when I can so that I can be
here for my kids.
On top of being a
full time mom I keep my successful self-made organization on track by managing
every aspect of it (marketing, administration, customer service, sales,
bookkeeping, taxes, advertising, partnerships, writing, etc) all by myself. My husband is super supportive -- heck without
him I could never work at all, but he has a full time job of his own outside
the home.
It gets particularly irritating when people think that
because I work from home I am available for them (because heck a real job doesn’t
happen at home), or when I hear people say how wonderful it must be to work
from home because “that is so much easier than my job”. Trust me, I got things to do and it isn’t
easy. Working for myself from home is probably
even tougher because I don’t have sick days I can use when I don’t feel well (stop
whining you are sick when you are taking a day off work to lie in bed), I don’t
have typical evenings and weekends off….when I want a vacation I have to sort
out all of the logistics myself and deal with that impact (I can’t just put in
a vacation request!)…. I don’t have coworkers to lend a hand when tough
situations arise, and I don’t get to offload work when the unforeseen pops up.
I am proud that with just a push in the right direction from
my supportive husband and my own determination I carved out a niche for myself
and I am able to work from home. Let’s respect
that. Don’t pop by without calling, don’t assume I am free during the day to
take your call or help you out, try to remember that I work odd hours like
evenings and weekends, and don’t act like my work (or my time) is of lesser importance
than yours.
Honestly, if you really think working for yourself from home
is so great why aren’t you doing it?!
