The shift from part-time working mom to full-time working mom happened in inches. I started turning down volunteer opportunities, missing playdates and not responding to social invitations since I wasn’t sure I could attend. I told myself it was only temporary, until I met my deadline, launched my business, completed the project du jour, etc.
I knew that something was changing, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Then, I noticed that the phone stopped ringing. Friends stopped calling to chit chat or extend an invitation to the pool. My living room--the gathering place for dozens of volunteer meetings over the last several years--sat empty.
This fall, I resigned from the babysitting coop I started 6 years ago. My oldest can babysit for his brothers now, and I hadn’t been to a meeting in months, I justified to myself. But, this ultra-pragmatic attitude, and the realization that any time I wasn’t spending at work was solely dedicated to my family, finally broke through and registered in my brain. And at about the same time, I started to feel really anxious. The loneliness of being an entrepreneur had set in long ago and become a familiar companion, but the sadness and anxiety were new.
I realize now that I was letting go of the old, but wasn’t ushering in the new in a celebratory, balanced sort of way. I had reverted to my customary workhorse ways and lost my balance. To rectify the situation, I realized I had to put new systems in place to get back to what’s important to me. Work and family may be all I have time for, but they’re not all I need.
Here are some of the ways I’m trying to strike a balance again:
- Walk and blog. Three other small business owners work within the immediate vicinity of my office. We meet once a week for one hour. The first half hour, we walk and talk about our business challenges, set goals and network. For the second half hour, we sit together with our laptops at one of our offices and blog. So, in one hour I accomplish four goals: fitness, social needs, thinking about my business and blogging.
- Practice acts of kindness. With so many people out of work, I get a lot of requests for help from job seekers. And while I may not be able to find them all jobs, I can be a face of kindness and provide resources to help them in their search. It feels good to pay it forward and keeps my feet planted on the ground. It also helps me organize my thoughts for future blogs and articles and stay connected to the world.
- Let go of my Blackberry. My Blackberry lulls me into thinking I’m working when what I’m really doing is monitoring. And worse, I miss emails since having looked at them on my Blackberry registers in my brain as having answered them. It actually impedes my productivity.
- Talk about things other than work. As an entrepreneur, it seems like every waking (and even sleeping) moment is spent thinking about my business. It’s hard to turn it off and after a while, it makes me a really boring conversationalist. I’m making a conscious effort to have “work free zones” in my interactions with others. I also make sure to catch interesting stories on the internet, or in the paper, that are not business related, so that I have things to talk about besides work.
- Take time out to do things I love, even if I don’t have time. As Lotte Bailyn said to me last summer, “We do our best work when we’re not working.” Going to a mom’s group, or sitting with my children while they read is good for my soul and rests my brain, so that when I do go back to my work, I have new focus and perspective.
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