WAHM Blog

I found a WAHM's page, and here's some of the highlights. Its really easy to relate to,
I love to joke with people about my boss:
My boss is a real bitch.
My boss makes me work overtime.
I asked my boss for some vacation time, and she said no.
Boy, when I was talking to my Human Resources person about my kid being sick, she was so sympathetic! It was like she had just been through it too!
You can imagine my shock when I found out my husband was sleeping with my boss!
However, even though I joke, I am acutely aware that as a self-employed person, I wear all of these hats alone. And in order to be fair to my clients, my boss, and my employee, I have to divide myself into all of these people ruthlessly. My boss pays me once a month. She doesn’t care whether she has extra money in the business coffers when I am running low. And I do not ask her for advances.
My employee expects to be paid, regardless of whether my clients have paid the company for services yet or not. And she does not understand, nor should she be expected to, that academic departments, who provide the bulk of payments for our services, work slowly. She still has to pay for health insurance, a car loan, a mortgage, and her three children, as she reminds me every time she balances her checkbook.
The boss who is a mother and the employee who is a mother are often at odds as well. Take yesterday for example. As the boss, I was fully aware of deadlines and responsibilities, and I wanted my employee to make a certain amount of progress before the working day was done. As the employee, I wanted flex time: I wanted to take a break in the afternoon to take my kids to the pool and to attend my son’s baseball game, in return for working very late hours last night. My boss should have known better: By 12:25 a.m., I was exhausted and vowed to be a better, more focused employee in the morning.
It’s a balancing act every single day. Will I be a better boss today or a better employee? Will family responsiblities win out, or deadlines? Today, I will get more done on my deadlines simply by virtue of the fact that my son doesn’t have a baseball game. I usually go to karaoke on Tuesday nights with my husband, but he is out of town, and I have work to do. Every day, weighing and measuring, taking accounts. One person could go crazy with trying to manage it all, wear so many hats alone.
So, how do I keep from going crazy? It all boils down to one thing: My kids. It sounds cheesey and hokey, but actually it is a lot more simple and practical. I think for most people it all comes down to the children: I work to provide for my children. Some days, it is more important to meet the deadline that will feed them. However, I am not just a drone who feeds the children and ignores them the rest of the time.
Some days it is more important to remember why I became my own boss in the first place. It is more important to set less urgent work aside so I can thrill in my children. If I remember each day what the most important thing is– my children– then I manage to get the balance right. That is the trick. Simple, right? Underneath the bills, the dishes, and the deadlines, the kids are buried there somewhere. You just have to dig through all the other stuff to find them.