by Jacqueline Dooley
Sometimes life seems like a constant game of tag and I’m often chasing after something frustratingly out of reach. In fact, the old idiom “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” seems to have caught hold of me over the past couple of months.
My recent columns have focused on juggling too much — too much work, too much stress and way too much distraction. It’s easy to get caught up in this mindset.
It’s far more difficult to assess the situation you’re in, take a step back and say, “Hey, I’ve got a pretty sweet setup here.”
A good friend of mine recently pointed out the way I’ve structured my professional life — the working from home part of it, in particular, has many positives, not the least of which is the effect it has on my family.
Being home all the time really enhances my life, and my family’s. It’s more than the flexibility I have which allows me to schedule doctors’ ap-pointments and teachers’ conferences in the middle of the day. It’s about being present in the house so my husband isn’t completely alone all day with the kids. In a word: accessibility.
Accessibility means I can help out in ways that would be impossible if I had to leave each day for the office.
Here’s a recent example. My 2-year-old has a bad cold which makes her cough at night. Last night, she woke up at 2 a.m. and my husband got up with her for more than an hour. She has learned slowly to be a good sleeper, but her sleep is fragile and easily disrupted by standard toddler complaints such as teething, illness and growth spurts.
Division of labor
My husband and I have discussed her evening wake ups and agreed it is best for him to get up with her since I need sleep to function adequately at my job. She’s also very attached to me and tends to fight the prospect of sleep if I’m the one who gets her, so a late-night rendezvous will last twice as long when I’m the one who gets her.
How was I helpful? Well, I made the executive decision to let him sleep in the next morning. I made him coffee, got my older daughter ready for school and even managed to drop her off and arrive home before our youngest woke up. He got to sleep past eight, take a shower and have his first cup of coffee by the time I arrived home. The best part? I still made it to work by 9 a.m.
I’m not saying I’m a hero. Many parents drop their kids off at school or day care before they go to work, and I definitely feel lucky that this is a task my husband owns. But being able to support him when he’s super tired means he doesn’t get burned out, which means he’s happier when he’s with the kids.
This makes happier kids and happy kids — you guessed it — make for a very happy mommy, and much more productive worker.
This is only one of many examples of how being present in my home is good for my family’s health.
My older daughter, who loves having me close by, provides another example. Now that she has learned not to come into my office five times a day, I have found I love it, too.
Accessibility works both ways. I love having my family around me all the time. Knowing I can steal a hug whenever the moment strikes me is definitely a self-employment perk.
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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, May 27th, 2006.
By Jacqueline Dooley
I find it incredibly difficult to get back into the mindset of working on Monday morning. The recent departure of my free time is an almost-physical loss because all the trappings of the weekend are so close at hand — the kids downstairs, the piles of laundry I didn’t quite finish washing, the yard toys outside my window strewn all over the place and in need of cleanup.
This past Monday was worse then ever. I’d just spent a long three-day weekend with my girls preparing for, then enjoying, then recovering from, their collaborative birthday party Saturday. The hectic weekend which ended in a slow, lazy Mother’s Day Sunday with lots of rain, lots of toys and (I confess) a generous nap for me was pure bliss. Once the work week started it was extremely difficult for me to put my business persona back on.
I’ve begun to wonder if my newfound dread of Mondays has to do with working from home. I never used to have such a hard time getting started. But these days the weekend still clings to me on Monday morning no matter how fast I run up the stairs to my office at 9 a.m. to settle back into the work week.
The feeling of having one foot deeply rooted in homemaking, and the other firmly planted in the business world, is very stark and stressful on Monday morning. Weekend chores feel unfinished, but I’m close enough to remedy that. I have to suppress the urge to run downstairs and spend another 15 minutes playing and cleaning among the girls, even as I flip through my e-mail, update my to-do-list and prepare to dig deep into the week’s deadlines.
Personas collide
These mom/work mo-ments tend to jump out at me and cause my two personas to crash into each other on a fairly consistent basis. For example, inevitably the office phone will ring while I’m at lunch — a time often spent eating and playing with my kids. When this happens, I let it ring, but I can’t help wonder who in the business world needs me and what they would think if they knew that I’d spent the past 10 minutes lying flat on my back on the driveway while my 5-year-old traced me in four shades of pastel-colored chalk.
Working and living in the same place has made me realize the skills involved in running a household are awfully similar to the skills I use to run my business. So I guess it should come as no surprise to me that because I both work and live in my home, my two identities — mom and career woman — are constantly vying for dominance. When Monday rolls around, I’ll try to be ready for it.
The truth is, I don’t think I will ever be able to completely separate my personal self from my work self ever again.
Having kids changed that forever.
Running a business out of my home changed it even more. For me, business is personal and my personal life will always influence the choices I make during the work day.
The separation anxiety I feel toward my house, my kids and my domesticity is equal to the stress I feel when I’m forced to break for lunch and hold off on finishing an important project for the inconvenient necessity of eating. In the end, it’s all about focusing on the moment and striving to achieve balance — something tenuous and at times completely absent — but I am ever hopeful that I’m getting closer to it each day that I’m on my own.
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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal under the the title, “Work at home makes it hard to avoid a case of the Mondays,” on Saturday, May 20th, 2006.
By Jacqueline Dooley
This past month I discovered I simply cannot say no to incoming work, regardless of the source. This has led me down a path of long days, late nights and exhaustion.
I’ll be the first to admit I’ve had a somewhat idealistic view of my own work day. I love the freedom of self-employment and the challenge of working on multiple projects simultaneously. My ego loves winning new jobs and being associated with the word “entrepreneur.”
The idealism bubble burst the other day, however, during a conversation with a client who said while he loved my work, he was a bit frustrated I wasn’t actually doing any of it for him.
This gave me pause. It forced me to realize I’d over-promised my time and was unable to deliver what was expected of me — a chronic problem that has begun cropping up more than I’d like to admit.
Why is this happening? Why can’t I say no to new work when I have plenty to keep me busy, my family fed and my children outfitted in the latest Target and Old Navy T-shirts? The truth is there’s an uncomfortable feeling I can’t seem to shake regardless of how much work I take on.
Fear is a factor
While I do not enjoy the ever-present crush of my growing workload and the discomfort of feeling guilty every moment I’m away from my computer, what motivates me to take on more work than I can reasonably juggle in a 40-hour week is fear — plain and simple.
My fear comes from being entirely on my own in a vast corporate landscape filled with people who have titles, benefits and some level of job security. Even though I love working on multiple projects for multiple companies, and I really love being my own boss, I am afraid when the current month ends, I will lose the “big” job and then where will I be?
This is essentially a very sound way to think when you are working for yourself. No one wants to rely on one egg, after all. But dividing my hours into too many portions is beginning to backfire. I’m not able to do a great job on any one project. I’m pushing deadlines to their limit and beyond. I am beginning to fantasize about how great it’d be to focus on one or two projects at a time, rather than 10 to 12.
It’s all up to me
Since I am the sole employee of my own vast empire, I have no one to fall back on for support. I’m not only responsible for the “production” aspect of my job, I am also responsible for continuing to maintain my expertise in my field and market my business.
Choices are not always easy. I’m beginning to realize I must walk away from some absolutely fantastic opportunities so I can continue to do a great job for my existing clients. In getting some less-than-positive feedback, I was forced to take a look at the level of service I was delivering and acknowledge it was not what I promised.
A hiring agent who I work with gave me some sage advice not too long ago. He said the best way to keep a gig going was to make myself indispensable — live in the moment and focus on one job at a time.
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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal under the title, “Learning to say no as job offers pour in makes life easier” on Saturday, May 13th, 2006.
by Jacqueline Dooley
There are many benefits to being self-employed and, as I’ve espoused in past columns, the top one for me is flexibility, both in location (being able to work from home) and my work schedule. But there are also things I’ve had to give up that, while not deal breakers, are fairly huge hurdles that are not likely to disappear anytime soon.
Health Insurance
Or lack thereof, I should say.
I took health insurance for granted during my 12 years of full-time employment at various companies. In fact, during my last full-time year of employment, I complained bitterly to my husband about the $300 per month that was removed from my paycheck to cover the cost of family health insurance. When I started working for myself, we switched to my husband’s benefits package which bumped us up to $500 per month because his employer didn’t cover as much.
Then, when my husband left his job to stay home with the kids, we switched to COBRA and our monthly health insurance cost jumped to $600, which left us shaking our heads and cursing the system, particularly since that $600 didn’t include prescription drug coverage. When I worked full time from August through March, my employer covered 75 percent of my health insurance and the cost once again dropped to about $300. I did not complain this time.
I now pay nearly $900 a month, which is a discounted amount I receive because I am a member of the New Paltz Chamber of Commerce. Joining a chamber of commerce is one of the few ways a self-employed person can actually find affordable health insurance in New York state. If I were to go directly to the insurance company, it would cost twice that (at least). The true irony is how much I miss those $600 COBRA payments.
Paid time off
I never thought of paid time off as a benefit until it no longer existed. Again, I complained about the limited amount of time off most positions offered me (mainly two weeks at first, then three as my career advanced). All companies provided five or six additional days off which could be used as sick or personal days.
I was never one to use my sick time in excess, but it was definitely nice to have it available to me if I needed it (like the time I was in a car accident and was out for more than a week with whiplash). So now, while I enjoy the flexibility to come and go as I please, I feel the pinch at the beginning of the month if my hours from the previous month are short due to missed work days.
And, again, I marvel at the concept of a company paying you when you’re not actually working (the flip side of this is the expectation that you’ll work 60-hour weeks and only get paid for 40 hours).
Taxes and expenses
There are other more subtle benefits missing from my life as a self-employed individual.
I’m responsible for covering the full 15.3 percent of Social Security and Medicare taxes — an employer normally covers half (7.65 percent) of this expense. I am no longer entitled to unemployment, something I had to use when I was laid off in 2002. I have to pay for my own liability insurance and I pay for industry conferences and continuing education out of my own pocket (the upside is that business-related education is a tax write-off).
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This article was published in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Saturday, May6th, 2006.
