It’s hard not to take job home when you’re already there | Apr 15th 2006
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.