I’ve worked part-time from home for the last few years and it’s a great set up whilst the girls are at school and creates a good work/life balance. During the six weeks holiday I take a couple of actual weeks holiday where the out of office goes on, and the other four weeks balance out nicely with a combination of work days and fun days.

Working this year

This year has been rather different. I’ve been working on a large scale project. Such was the scale of the project that in the first instance, two week’s holiday was shaved down to nine days. The holiday was great, we had a brilliant time and I would certainly recommend Menorca as a great destination for a family holiday.

When we got back I felt a weight like I’d never felt before when working during the holidays. I knew my husband was going away for work for over two weeks so this was certainly a contributing factor, but this wasn’t the primary reason.

Over the holidays I’ve been working on a project that’s LA-based so there has been an eight hour time difference to contend with. In some senses that was good, we could do activities in the daytime and then I could work into the night. However, there was a flip side… From 4pm onwards I was a bit on tenterhooks knowing that my working day was about to kick off; I felt like I was too focused on packing the kids off to bed so that I could get on. I was working until late and then going to bed feeling wired and tired. The next morning I’d be checking my phone as soon as I opened my eyes to see what I’d missed whilst I was asleep. Breakfast was often quite delayed as I responded to something that had happened overnight, even though the recipient of the email wouldn’t be seeing it for at least six hours.

We’ve been on plenty of excursions: Hampton Court Palace, Tulleys Farm, Birdworld, Littlehampton, Wisley, Garsons to name a few, but this hasn’t stopped me feeling bad.

I feel like I’ve projected my stress too much and not shielded the kids from it enough. Sofia made me breakfast in bed twice whilst Matt was away and all the girls made me cards, which I feel shows that they thought I needed looking after/cheering up. That makes me feel rather guilty.

I don’t feel like the holidays have been the carefree experience of other years; I’m just hoping that the girls don’t view them the same way.

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I love spending lots of time with my children and there are lots of laughs.

Work Life Balance

The work life balance is always a bit of a conundrum. When Sofia was six weeks old I started to work part-time from home. I was intending to start doing this 10 weeks into my maternity leave as statutory maternity pay wasn’t particularly appealing. With no one covering my leave, I felt compelled to check emails and once I started doing this I got involved and then thought that I might as well be paid for my efforts.

Newborns sleep quite a bit, so I was able to get a lot of work done in this time. However, being a new mum, trying to keep some semblance of a tidy house and doing work, was pretty stressful. I was going to mother and baby groups in the morning, rushing home to reply to the most urgent emails, and then rushing back out again for an afternoon activity. Armed with my Blackberry, I was ‘always on’ and constantly waiting for a red blinking light, which signalled another email.

When Sofia was approaching one I was very fortunate to be offered my job back part-time; going into the office two days a week and essentially working from home half a day. I LOVED this set up. For me, this was the perfect work/mum balance. I loved the banter with my old work colleagues and talking about topics other than the children. I even enjoyed the commute as I had an hour of uninterrupted time where I could read a magazine or listen to music. On the three days I wasn’t in the office, I had real quality time with Sofia and spread my half-day working from home across the evenings and nap times.

When the twins came along, I knew that working – even part-time – was no longer viable. I totally immersed myself in motherhood and no longer checked my phone obsessively for emails. It was liberating to not be mentally drafting a work email whilst at a children’s group or planning a press release at a play date. I totally embraced and loved this lifestyle change and really let go.

My working from home pose.

However, the twins are now 22-months, and I have found myself craving something more mentally stimulating to go alongside going to groups, washing, cleaning, cooking and more cleaning. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the fun and laughter we have and I certainly wouldn’t want to work full-time, but I’ve had the feeling that I need an additional challenge and – dare I say it – I’ve been missing work. Blogging has been a great channel since I started writing for TalkMum in November of last year; that inspired me to start this blog in January of this year.

Last week an accommodation company, after speaking to a number of other people, asked me to do its PR. That made me feel good.

Who needs sleep anyway?

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