Working at home is not as easy as it appears.

As someone who has worked at home for the last 13 years I just have one thing to say. IT. IS. HARD. It is so hard to work at home when you have 3 kids. I was better at it when I had one child. Then I had 2 and was working at home. When the 3rd one came along I decided I needed to stop working at home and that's when I went to teaching preschool. Teaching preschool is so much better than working at home with 2 small children under the age of 3. Now that they are getting older and will be going to school all day (all 3...a day I thought would never come) I will go back to looking for a job to do at home again.

I enjoyed teaching for Educate Online. However,it was hard to make 3 children be quiet from 3-8 during the week. I very seldom got any hours to do during the day while they were at school. I think during the 4 months I worked there I worked a total of 5 hours during the school day. It almost isn't fair to them. Their after school activities had to stop too.

When you work at home you are constantly distracted. The kids want food, drinks, snacks, something to do, somewhere they need to go or they are just bored and want to talk to mom. Talking to mom is a good thing but not when you are trying to work. Most companies want you to put your children in daycare when you work at home. I'm sorry, but with the amount of money you pay me, that is just not feasible folks! You also never leave work. So your work is always there staring at you. Making you feel uncomfortable. Why is it looking at me? How do I make it stop? If you're not careful you can find yourself working all kinds of extra hours that you wouldn't be putting in if you had an outside the home job.

Working at home may be hard but it's also rewarding. It's great to be the one who's here with my children. Only one of mine ended up going to day care and he only went for 2 years. I'm so thankful that I have been the one to care for them when they are sick, tired, hungry, silly or even just cranky! There are perks when we had all those school snow days in January I was able to work and bring in a paycheck while many just enjoyed days off without pay. I'm hoping with my blog I will eventually be able to just write from home and bring in some kind of extra income. My blog isn't new but in the blog world it's still a baby. It will take a lot of time and hard work to make this blog marketable. I'm up for the challenge. Bring it! It's funny that my degree is in education because I think I'm better at marketing than I am teaching. One of my jobs at home was building a website from the ground up, marketing it, advertising it and doing everything else. I was accounts payable, accounts receivable, customer service, orderer of inventory, making the inventory available to the customers and so on and so on. Then I had to learn search engine optimization. That little website is doing great even today. I sold it during the time when I had 2 children under the age of 3. Working at home is both rewarding and difficult. Have you worked at home? What did you experience?

Here's an article I cam across about the subject of working at home. Enjoy!
http://financialedge.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1210/5-Delusions-About-Working-From-Home.aspx?
partner=msnbc

Career moves...food, dancing, and writing...all the major life groups. :)

I was hired by a company almost two months ago. I have yet to work for them. Big sigh. I believe that they are going to use me but it may take a few more weeks. I was hoping to use this job as Christmas money. Yeah, that's not happening. Good thing I had some money put back already. As a family of 5 with two sets of grandparents we don't spend more than $700 (for 9 people) on Christmas. That's because we don't usually have more than that. My hubby gets a bonus...a tiny one, but, hey, I guess free money is free money. My children are used to small Christmases. They are such great kids. They rarely ask for things and never throw fits in stores. They know going in that we are coming out with only what's on that list. I know that not having tons of excess money can be a challenge but it really is a blessing for your children. It's a lesson in what's important in life and what's unnecessary. We have all that we need. The love of our family, food on our table, a roof over our head, and clothes on their backs and that is all we need. Everything else is cake. Great now I want cake. :)

Speaking of cake, I make almost everything we eat from scratch. I don't make bread, crackers, and cereal. But, if I can make it from scratch I do. After watching Food, Inc one of the many things I took away from it was you can eat anything you want as long as you make it. Because when you make it you know what's in it. (Did you know margarine is one molecule away from being plastic? Your body knows what to do with butter it has no idea what to do with margarine) So, I made homemade stuffing for Thanksgiving. Then, we went with family to have another thanksgiving and there was stuffing there. It was sooooo good. It was frozen and sold at Walmart. I had actually forgotten about it. Anyway, I was speaking to my hubby about how good that stuffing was and how I had forgotten all about it. His exact words to me were, "yes, it was. But yours was better and we know what is in yours." Awww. He notices what I do for the family. Trying to be healthier can be hard!

I'm loving the dance class I take on Thurs nights. It's line dancing and it's a great 2 hour workout. It begins again this week. Let me know if anyone wants to go with me. It's a lot of fun. Today I worked out on the treadmill and the elliptical. I can tell the dancing is helping my stamina on both. It's increasing and that's great. I'm really going to try to kick up the weight loss a notch.

In addition to loving the dance class I'm loving writing again. I've been researching how to become a better writer. I love planning out new stories and seeing where they will go. Planning a story is a new thing for me. I was one of those who just did it on a whim. But I can definitely see where planning is a better way to go. It's like a map for your story. I have set a goal of writing five pages a day.

I would love to be contributing to the family income right now. But that's not happening. Maybe I need to look into volunteering for a food bank to give myself something to do. Hmm. I might need to make some calls.   This week on Thurs I have another mammogram at the Vanderbilt Breast Center. Hopefully nothing's changed and they will give my mind some rest from thinking too much.  My dad is doing great. He had another CT scan that showed he was still cancer free and they said his lungs sound great. What a nice change from this time last year! Life is good.