Working from home is not one big party

I am extremely fortunate that I am able to work from home, I realize how lucky I am.  I get to take the kids to school and fetch them during the day, attend sports matches where necessary etc.  Working from home is the best of both worlds (being 'there' for the kids during the day AND earning money. Doing two things at the same time isn't always easy!) and the worst of both worlds (having to be a full time mom AND a full time worker at the same time).  Working from home is awesome and horrible. But mostly awesome.  

Even before I had my own business, I used to work from home a few days a week, and I always worked harder from home than at the office.  If I slacked off at the office, well... it was ok because I was AT WORK.  I could afford to take a lunch break or sneak off to check Facebook. But when I worked from home I was very aware of the trust and the privilege I had in working from home, and so I worked extra hard, all the time. 

Now that I work for myself, where I am responsible for not only putting food on my family's table but putting food on my employees' table, I work even harder. I work in the early morning and late at night. I work when the kids are at school and at the side of the sports field. I am NEVER without my laptop.  And yes, I am lucky enough to occasionally go for a pedicure at 10am, but I always take my laptop with me, everywhere I go! Every one who knows me knows that I am ALWAYS tapping away at my laptop. I work work work. And so does my entire team. We all work from home. We have Dropbox and Skype and email and we run the business this way. My team are all mothers who are able to fetch their kids from school, go to swimming practice, soccer and extra murals with our kids. And answer emails at 5:30* in the morning and at 9pm at night.  We are all full time moms and full time employees.  And it works amazingly well. We are balanced, happy, hard working parents and workers. We work bloody hard but we absolutely LOVE what we do because we have the best job in the world. 

(In fact, it is exactly because my life is so busy that I don't have time to do 'personal' things like blog anymore)

Not everyone gets this.  There are many people who are very old school and who don't get that 'working from home' can mean increased productivity, higher profits and happier employees. They believe that the only way work can happen is clocking in at the office at 8am and clocking out at 4:30 am.  I know that while that works in some industries / situations, it doesn't always work. I have been that worker that clocked in and out at the office and believe me, I work about a million times harder and am so very much more productive now than I ever was in an office.

*this morning I got an email from one of my team at 5:45am. Another replied at 6:00. I responded at 7am. We have sorted out an entire issue before some people have even woken up. 

NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, the twins have a lovely Au Pair who helps out in the afternoon because it is physically impossible for me to be in two places at once, no matter how hard working I am. Max finishes at 12:15 and the twins finish at 1:45. Then they each have different extra murals / afternoon obligations. So yes, I have help with the kids in the afternoon while I work. 

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My dear husband, who I love dearly and who loves me very much too, and who, although he doesn't say it perhaps as often as I would like, appreciates what I am doing - running a successful business, contributing significantly towards the family coffers and doing a fairly decent job of taking care of our three kids. HOWEVER, he sincerely believes that because he works in an office, and I work from home, he works harder / better / more importantly than I do. That working from home is easy. That my day is made up of gym, pedicures and messing about while he works WAY HARDER than I do. That even though I work AND do the majority of the child care, and even though he SITS AND WATCHES TV WHEN HE GETS HOME WHILE I WORK AT NIGHT, he still believes he works harder than I do because he has to get dressed for work and drive in the traffic to the office.  Which, you know, is a little quaint and not like massively annoying (mostly). I try not to let it irritate me too much. I blame it on his Afrikaans Calvinistic upbringing (love you dear MIL!). 

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For the whole of January, I have been running my arse off.  A few mornings last week I had to wake up at 4am just to get through all my work for the days. It's been really hectic. Exhausting. I am not complaining though, as business is good and I am very aware of how fortunate I am. As I say, rather a 'too full' life than a life that is too empty. Am grateful.

Today, at about 3:30 after working hard the whole day (and the entire first 6 weeks of this year!), I went out my study to have a wee.  As I was up, Max was wondering around and saw me. Now that he has started big school after being at home for many months, I don't see him as much and I miss him.  And so I gathered Max up into my arms and went to my room to lie on the bed with him. I hugged him and we lay together for a bit.

And just then Marko walks into the room. He is NEVER home early (wouldn't be the right thing to leave the office early!), but today, on the ONE day I decide to take 30 minutes off to lie on the bed with Max, he comes home early.  "Ah, so THIS is what the two of you do during the day!" he says with a knowing look.

How fucking irritating.  What can I say.  I will never live it down now. I am so annoyed.  If I had more time and energy, I would try to MAKE Marko admit that I DO work as hard (harder!) than he does, but you know what, I don't even think it will make any difference.  So I will just carry on doing what I do, working hard and taking care of our kids as best I can, and taking the 30 minutes here and there to lie on the bed and hug my child. Because I want to, and because I can.  

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I love my husband very much, and he loves me very much and he is very good to me. And he is mostly not a pain in the arse, and I am lucky to have him and all of that good stuff. It is just this teeny tiny thing that drives me insane!  "Words of Affirmation" is my love language. I need to hear I am doing a good job and that I am appreciated. And I need to believe that you mean it. 

(This feels kind of ranty. I started it last night, and then got distracted and am not as irritated today as I was yesterday. But I decided to post it anyway as I hardly ever blog any more! A ranty blog is better than no blog at all :) )

Comments

[Sadia]

Your point is SO SO true. For one year, I did my current office job from home because my family moved away from the city where my office is located. Over the course of that year, I was rather more productive than I was in the office, in part because I didn't count social breaks as work time the way I would in the office, in part because I was more judicious about scheduling meetings. Over the course of the year, though, I saw my husband's respect for my time and level of effort I put into my work diminish until I was the only one caring for the children or taking care of the home. It was very discouraging. Thankfully, my employers were still appreciative of my work and I'm now in the office 4 days a week, working from home 1 day.

[Tine]

Working from home and being self-employed is NOT for the faint of heart. I know...I do it too! Marko is clueless. I say help him get a clue. Challenge him to do all his work at home whilst juggling all the other things you juggle. He will be begging for mercy after 1 day.

[Sara]

I work at the office and my husband is a stay-at-home dad (no income-earning at all) to ONE child who spends 6 hours/day at school, and he STILL thinks he works harder than me. His jobs are to drop her off at school (I am there too, since we use one car and it is on the way to my work), drop me off at work, go home and do fuck all, pick her up six hours later, and pick me up three hours after that. OK he does the grocery shopping and usually (but not always) cooks dinner. I work more than full time, do all of our family administration (bills, legal stuff, taxes, etc.), and do half of the non-cooking housework, but he STILL thinks he works harder. I has nothing to do with reality, or who works where. I think men just need to think that whatever they are doing is somehow more intense. Ugh.

[Laragh Kennedy]

I think men do have to work harder at housework because most men are inept and clueless. I cringe when I see my husband doing housework (which is rarely). He's inefficient and he doesn't think things out before he starts. Then, after taking 45 minutes to do a job that I can do better in 15 minutes, he'll swagger around drawing attention to it. So he thinks it's much harder than it is, and he really believes he works harder to do, well, everything. I just get it done, and I never congratulate myself when I complete a job. That would be like praising myself for breathing! As to working at home, I hated it. I felt like nothing was ever complete. I'd come out of my home office and notice the laundry pile or the dishes on the counter, and whenever I was doing household chores, I felt the pull of some project or assignment I hadn't finished. I'm better off now that I'm back in the office 100%.

[Shannon]

Ladies, we are our own worst enemies! Its because we are so damned good at working full time (whether that be at the office / home) AND managing homes (whether it be the staff in them or doing it ourselves) AND managing the kids and their myriad of activities and parties and making it look so easy, that it simply doesn't occur to the men in our lives to question how it all gets done. Which means they can't quite figure out why we are so stressed or tired. They have no clue what's going on around them because it doesn't occur to them to wonder about that stuff. We need to just 'be worse at it' or find it within ourselves to tell the men that we 'can't right now', without feeling the crushing guilt that we always feel when we're not being superwoman.

[Boundaries!]

I totally get what you're saying Tertia! My frustration is that my hubby (who is also home based although not self-employed) is NEVER off of his phone or ipad. He is constantly clicking away answering mails or messages from early morning until late at night - he is often called on to work weekends and once a month he goes away on business for 4 - 5 days. When he does work weekends or can't attend family functions because of work - his company never compensates for this time and that is what upsets me. I keep telling him that our children are growing up and he is missing out on their childhood. I think that he needs to set boundaries (within reason) and stick to them. It's all about give & take (and balance). The result is that I'm the one that has an office job, runs the household, meets the needs of our children, etc., and it is exhausting. However, just let me call him or message him - apparently, his WAY to busy to answer any communication from "home". OK. My rant is over. Thank you for not judging and letting me get that off my chest :)

[Anne]

So, so true. Both my husband and I work at office jobs (in fields where being in the office is a requirement), but we've had many struggles in the past over who was going to take off when one of the kids got sick or the daycare/school was closed for the day. When our firstborn was an infant, my job was a lot more flexible, and so I tended to take time off more than he did. However, I then got a new job that was not so flexible, and thus pushed harder to have a "50-50" arrangement with childcare (eg, if the kid was sick for two days, we would each take off one day). My husband HATED this. He also would rarely if ever take a slightly sick kid to work with him, saying that it didn't seem "legitimate." I parried with, "Mothers have to do this frequently--are you saying when we do this our work is not legitimate?" He didn't have an answer to that one...

In all fairness, however, I do think (at least here in the US) there is still a hangover in that managers and coworkers are often more willing to give working mothers slack when it comes to having to rush out of a meeting because a kid is throwing up at school than they are for working fathers. I'm hoping this hangover is in its last gasps and will be more or less done with in the next ten years...

And as a P.S.--I concur with Shannon (above): I do nearly all of the household management-type stuff for our family, and it drives me absolutely bonkers when I am still working at night (paying bills, laundry, etc.) and my husband sits down to play video games. WTF??? As I have said to him many times: you don't get to play when there's still housework to be done, and that you see me doing right in front of you!! Argh!