By Jacqueline Dooley
For the Poughkeepsie Journal
Are self-employed people happier than the traditionally employed?
I asked a good friend and colleague of mine this very question.
Stacie Wheeley is the owner and sole employee of One Search Marketing, a search marketing firm based in Maryland. I met Stacie when I was consulting part time for the company she was working for as a full-time, salaried employee. Stacie and I became friends without ever meeting face-to-face. Part of the reason we bonded was we both became pregnant at exactly the same time.
Stacie returned to work after five months maternity leave, but she was very unhappy with the amount of time she was away from her baby and the lack of flexibility her job offered. It’s one thing to drag yourself into work when you’re sick, it’s quite another to leave a sick baby with a sitter or family member. Stacie ultimately made the decision to leave her job of five years and start her own business.
Lately, we’ve been working together on a project that’s been keeping us both up at night, and working late on weekends. It pays very well, the work is steady and the job could be fairly longterm, but the trade-off is high. We’ve had very little flexibility with our time because the project has been all-encompassing.
Consequently, we’ve had less time to spend on other clients, business development (for our own companies) and, most importantly, with our families. It kind of feels like a ‘‘real’’ job.
It appears the work may be drying up, at last, and when I mentioned this to Stacie, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her response was, ‘‘I’m glad. This job has shown me what I want out of work.’’
I asked her what she meant by that and she explained she’d had to take a day off to take her 2-year-old to the doctor. After the doctor, they went to get ice cream. She loved taking time out to spend with her daughter, and the contrast of spending the day with her child after two months of a very grueling work schedule made her assess how she wanted to approach working in the future.
Downsizing
She has decided to work on smaller, less secure jobs so she can spend more time with her daughter. This is ultimately what she wants out of work — flexibility, independence and the power to make choices about her day-to-day schedule.
This is also what I want out of work. I realized this in February, when I quit a full-time, salaried job to rejoin the ranks of the self-employed. My employer allowed me to work out of my home four days a week, but I was required to travel into Manhattan (from New Paltz) once a week. This meant that one day a week I would not see my kids at all. I’d leave before they woke up and get home after they went to sleep. It took me eight months to realize how unhappy this made me, but when it finally hit me, I knew I had to change the situation.
Self-employment, for me (and Stacie), means freedom. Freedom to choose clients we want to work with and projects that are meaningful to us, freedom to start and end the day when we want and, most of all, freedom to hang out with our kids — without apology.
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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, April 29th, 2006.
By Jacqueline Dooley
For the Poughkeepsie Journal
I rarely think of my work-at-home arrangement, or the conflict I’ve had between juggling work and family, in terms of the bigger societal picture. It’s odd enough to unintentionally be in the thick of it, but odder still to suddenly blink and find it’s been a hot topic in the media lately thanks, in part, to a new book by Leslie Morgan Steiner, an advertising executive at the Washington Post.
When one of my friends e-mailed an excerpt from Steiner’s book titled, “Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families,” I cringed.
I have to admit I hate the term “mommy” unless it comes from the mouths of my children. The idea of working and nonworking “mommies” facing off left me with a strong feeling of unease.
Upon reading the book, I discovered it wasn’t nearly as confrontational and catty as the title led me to believe. The collection of essays written by women (most, but not all, have children), was a worthwhile read. The essays are poignant and honest.
It is not lost on me (or many reviewers) that the book focuses mainly on upper-middle class white women who have the means to hire nannies and pay for top-notch day-care facilities.
Yet I feel it’s never a bad thing to bring up the issue of work/family balance, even if the scenarios in this book are unattainable or unrealistic for the majority of American women.
Author offers take
I had the opportunity to speak with Steiner about “Mommy Wars,” and get her take on the controversial issue of work-at-home vs. stay-at-home moms. One of the big questions I had was what about those of us who have to work? Does the conflict then become moot?
“No, I don’t think it makes the conflict go away. Some women have to work for financial reasons. Some women have to stay home for financial reasons. We’re always told we have unlimited choices, but sometimes you don’t have a choice,” she said.
It’s true the inner conflict does not go away (at least in my case) when you don’t have a choice. The ongoing guilt/ worry/resentment of wanting to be with my kids more, and knowing I have to put in 40 full hours per week in order to properly support my family is often there, but what about the external conflict?
Do we reserve that only for women who have the luxury of choice? For me, stay-at-home versus work-at-home “mommies” is not the real issue here.
I feel more affronted by the expectations that are placed not only on mothers, but on all parents, without any kind of adequate support or re-sources. The reality is it often takes two salaries to get by in today’s America — so where does that leave our kids?
Answers not same
I tackled the dilemma of a too-demanding job by scaling back and working from home, but Steiner reflects this is not the answer for everyone.
“Removing yourself from the traditional work force (via self-employment or otherwise) is not the answer overall,” she said, “because women have to do things to make companies change. Flexibility is free or mostly free and companies are crazy not to offer it to female employees.”
I don’t entirely agree with Steiner’s viewpoint. I think the only way to make companies change in the long run may very well be to remove yourself from the “traditional” work force.
When good workers leave bad companies in droves, either to start their own companies, work for better companies or opt out of the work force altogether, the “traditional work force” begins to change.
Jacqueline Dooley is the owner of Jacqueline Dooley Internet Marketing. She lives in Eddyville with her husband, Jim and two daughters, Emily and Ana.
– The above article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, April 15th, 2006.
By Jacqueline Dooley
For the Poughkeepsie Journal
When I worked outside my home, I was (somewhat) able to separate myself from the stress of deadlines, mistakes and comically long to-do lists. I had the ride home to decompress. I left most of the accoutrements of work at the office. It wasn’t as easy to check my e-mail every 5 minutes and I certainly didn’t hear the office phone ringing.
This work-home separation is a thing of the past for me. These days it’s incredibly difficult to make a clean separation from the stresses of the office when the work day is over. It’s nearly impossible to do after a rough day — the kind of day where a deadline’s been missed, or a goal has yet to be realized or a mistake has been made.
I have difficulty decompressing from bad days like I used to when I worked full time at an office. The trip down the stairs is just not enough time to separate myself from the stress and guilt I feel in leaving work unfinished. I feel compelled to pick up my phone after 6:30 and I can’t stop checking my e-mail every 10 minutes throughout the evening. The worst part is that I’m distracted when I’m with my kids.
The irony of this distraction is not lost to me. When I’m at my desk, plugging away and being productive, my thoughts often drift downstairs to where my kids are playing. My husband, a full-time stay-at-home dad, gets to take them outside and make chalk drawings in the driveway, or go to the park on these increasingly glorious spring days.
As melancholy as all this sounds, I love my work. I love the freedom of consulting and the joy I get from a job well done. I really love being able to mold my job around my kids’ needs and not the other way around. Still, sometimes the elusive balance between work and home life slips away from me. Lately, it’s been toward work — too much of it for too many months in a row.
I’m learning to recognize the signs of this shift of balance by the way I spend my time with my family when I’m not working. I become short-tempered and impatient toward everyone. I don’t enjoy the simple things I’ve been yearning for all day (giving the girls a bath, for example) because I’m dying to check my e-mail. I lay awake at night going over my to-do list for the next day. When this stuff starts to happen, I know I need to pull back.
The beauty of being self-employed is that I don’t need to ask permission to do this.
For example, recently I announced (on short notice) to several of my colleagues that I had to pick up my daughter from preschool. I didn’t really have to — my husband could’ve handled this, but I wanted to see my kids and get outside. So I resolved to work later in the evening, after the kids were in bed. I marched downstairs, swiped my toddler from her game of blocks, packed a hasty diaper bag and picked up my older daughter from preschool (much to my husband’s delight).
My reward was that I got to witness the sweetest hug ever when my two girls saw each other at the preschool. I couldn’t stop grinning after that. And when we walked to the car after we’d loaded up my 4-year-old’s artwork and belongings, I did not think about work for even a moment.
– This above article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, April 15th, 2006.
by Jacqueline Dooley
For the Poughkeepsie Journal
My home office is tucked into the corner of my spare bedroom. It’s on the second floor, nestled at the end of the hall. This remote location enables me to talk to clients and get work done in relative peace.
My husband, a full-time stay-at-home-dad, watches our two small daughters while I work.
It is nearly impossible for my 2-year-old to get me during the day without considerable assistance. My 4-year-old has learned how to shimmy over the gate at the bottom of the stairs, but she’s in preschool three days a week and rarely comes upstairs without asking.
So it appears I have conquered the most difficult aspect of work-at-home-momdom — disturbances from the kids. Except the problem is not them — it’s me.
When I started working out of my home, my then-1-year-old and I were joined at the hip. A lot of the decisions I made in setting up my business had to do with walling myself off from her. The term, “billable hours,” became my mantra. Where before I had been nestled in the iron arms of a large corporation and enjoyed a comfortable salary, I was now accountable for every minute I worked - or didn’t work. This was an eye-opening experience.
Back then, I tracked my hours in increments of 15 minutes and quickly learned how easy it was to fritter away the work day. It was not unusual for me to work three billable hours when I’d been upstairs for twice that. What was the problem?
Assess work habits
A deeper assessment of my work habits revealed two problems — temptation and procrastination. If you work outside the home, it’s hard getting into work by 9 a.m. on a Monday morning even when there are a fleet of people waiting for you. But the very fact that people are waiting motivates you to rub the sleep out of your eyes and get moving.
But what if there was no one watching to see if you came through the front door at 8:57 a.m.? What if the only people who really needed you at 9 a.m. were two little girls whose faces lit up every time you walked into the room?
Add to this the plaintive appeal of a 4-year-old who looks up from the picture she’s drawing (of me) and says, “I don’t want you to go upstairs yet, mommy. Stay downstairs for just a little while.”
Oh the agony. How can I explain billable hours to a child who thinks quarters are cool simply because they are round and shiny? It took over three years for me to learn the importance of sticking to a strict work schedule each day. I also learned that flexibility is key and, in fact, quite a large perk to the job.
Make up for lost time
I’ve learned that if I linger with the girls past 9 a.m. that I need to make up that time somehow. That could mean working until 5:30 p.m., or starting earlier tomorrow. It often means I must work at least a few hours on Saturday or Sunday — or both.
And it’s not only in the morning that procrastination and temptation rear their seductive heads.
The girls’ playroom is directly below my office and I can hear them all day long. Laughter I can live with, but it’s the crying that’s the hardest to ignore. There is inevitably a dramatic and heartbreaking explosion of tears at some point during the day.
I used to dash downstairs when this happened, but it just made my husband’s job more difficult. To avoid this, I invested in a good set of headphones. I now turn up the music and work through the intermittent domestic crises. It’s just as well — since, as you might imagine, drying tears is not billable.
– This above article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, April 8th, 2006.
