WHAT TO EXPECT | Balancing business, kids, burnout, and everything in between. I’m sharing what’s helped me navigate motherhood & self-employment, mistakes I made, what helped me cope & what I had to let go of.
You know you’ve grown as a person when you’re watching your kids mixing playdough colours and it doesn’t trigger you anymore. Or at least not as much. Am I right? With time, you learn to accept the little wins and just let go of the rest.
So now that Chloe (17 months) has started childcare, we’re entering – yet again – a whole new routine. That is, whenever she isn’t home sick with something (which happens more often than you’d think). Just this week – BAM – Chloe’s sick and my whole schedule crumbled. It’s fine (I mean what else can I do?), I’m used to it by now. These little unpleasant surprises just keep me on my toes.
If you read my blogs you know that I’m going to keep this real. No sugarcoating because who has time for that anyways? So no, it hasn’t been rainbows and unicorns working from home with a baby and a 5-year-old. Keeping up with my current retainers, projects and workload with Chloe at home was anything but easy. I wasn’t accepting any new projects and turning down new retainers for months because I couldn’t.
Between naps & deadlines
Maternity leave? What even is that? I was at my desk right up until Chloe’s birth, waddling around with a belly so big I had to swivel sideways to reach my keyboard. I guess, you can say that that’s one of the biggest drawbacks of being self-employed. I once had someone telling me that I have it easy because being my own boss, I could just stop working whenever I wanted, do whatever I wanted. I laughed.
If I stop working (setting aside the whole breaching-contracts thing for a moment and the fact that I have bills to pay) those retainers won’t wait around. They’ll just move on to someone else. And I know how difficult it is to start from scratch because that’s exactly what I had to do when I started my own gig. At the same time (and here’s when I went on a guilt trip), I simply wanted to be a good mum. So, I didn’t accept new work and tried to balance everything out, with Chloe taking top priority.
“But how are you managing to work as a self-employed with two kids?”
At the time, I had no idea how I was managing. But somehow, I did. Willpower? Maybe. Any help I could get from family members? Definitely. I worked at odd hours. Whenever the baby slept, I couldn’t just sleep as everyone tells you to (and I do mean everyone). I needed to get shit done and seeing that I don’t have any magical abilities (yet), something had to give.
My BIGGEST mistake 😱
That was one of the biggest mistakes I made. The lack of sleep killed me and eventually caught up with me. Running on four hours of sleep, day after day, is exhausting and unfortunately led to a really bad burnout. SO – lesson learned – but at the time, I couldn’t see a way out. Saying all this, my hubby and I do balance our chores, family duties and everything in between because that is how we roll. And, my mum is a godsend and I’m not sure how I would have coped without her. But now, looking back, I can kind of see what worked and what didn’t.
The oops list (no, I didn’t get it all right).
- Trying to do everything at once.
- Trying to please everyone.
- Multitasking.
- Throwing self-care out the window.
- Ignoring signs of burnout until it’s too late.
- And, getting to that point.
What helped.
- Accepting that I cannot do everything all at once.
- Instead of finding the perfect ‘block time’, I worked in 30-minute/1 hour bursts (not ideal but it worked for a while).
- ‘Batching’ similar work, like filming content, to save mental energy (and time).
- Creating a very loose schedule and a daily DOABLE to-do list.
- Clear and honest communication about timelines with my clients. Building a good relationship with people you’re working with always helps.
- Resting, doing things I love, going for coffees, alone and guilt-free. Which is much more difficult than you’d think, but necessary.
Ideals I had to just let go of.
- Quiet, uninterrupted work time.
- Pretending I can do it all alone.
- Comparing to others.
- Sticking to a rigid schedule.
- Responding immediately.
I learned to prioritise better. And I learned that rest and sleep are just as important and without them, I couldn’t concentrate anyway. I scheduled my time however I could so that when the baby wasn’t clinging to me, I worked my ass off – in bursts. What I spent hours on before, I got done in half that time.
There is no manual.
Mind you, as I’m writing all this, I’m trying to answer weird and random fire questions by my now 6-year- old while calming the little one down because all she wants to do is sit on my lap all day. But with both of them at school in the mornings, I found my rhythm again. And yes, I do start with a coffee at my local coffee shop because that is the little me-time I have and – to be honest with you, it fuels me and I feel my best again, on a personal & professional level.
Wow, I have managed to write this down. Weeks in the making because, well, kids. But I’m trying not to be too hard on myself and I’m happy to see this as a win, which it kind of is.
Speak soon
Amanda x
↠ MORE ON THIS! I’m sharing my self-employed journey on Instagram and show what I find most helpful over there. Feel free to follow for tips & updates!
Amanda Lia 