A Professional Change

I don't often blog about my professional life, my career if you will. A lot has changed for me at work in the past year.

I have always worked at a public relations agency. I love what I do, it's fun, different and something is always blowing up - literally and figuratively. A long-time fear I think of many new moms is that their career will suffer or change after you have kids.

Usually it does change, but it's not all that bad. You get a new perspective on life when you have a baby. I know I did.

My perspective changed even more when Will was 15 months old and we were told to start therapy and to figure out what was medically wrong with him. Luckily, I had worked with the same team for many many years and they worked with me on a lot of it. Then, we found out what was going on with Will and while I was falling apart, my team helped me hold it together at least professionally.

Sometimes going to the office was a welcome relief to my day. I could put aside all my fears, worries and sadness and just focus on doing good work. Then, it just got to be too much. My manager helped me to work out a new work schedule where I reduced my hours and started working 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.

That was a huge live saving change for us.

Fast forward a few months and out of the blue I had an old client email me to see if I knew of any freelance pr consultants, or would I possibly be interested in the job? It was something I knew I had to consider, plus I really like the people and the client. It's very rare to have a client fall from the sky. So, we ran the numbers and I resigned in September.

This wasn't a typical resignation I suppose. I cried, I wasn't unhappy with my job or the people I worked with. These people have been a huge support system and part of my life for nearly nine years, but it was the right thing for me and for my employer.

So, since October 1, I have been self employed, working from home, working at my new clients office and actually, working for my old employer! They hired me as a consultant for a few projects. It's been so busy that I haven't even had time to really tell anyone. Just in passing or as I email/talk with someone I haven't talked to in a while.

The first two weeks were really hard. I was still carrying 10+ years worth of "panic" that I was going to miss something. Then the panic changed to "I can't screw this up" and now I have what I would call, appropriate panic to do a good job for everyone.

It's changed the way I think about life, work/life balance and what I can do for Will and our family. I wouldn't have been able to do this without Neil's support. I don't have to count up my vacation days and pray that we won't end up in the hospital eating up days and days of time that I should be able to use to do stuff like take Will to have breakfast with Santa or go on an actual vacation!

One day, I even got a mani/pedi during my self-appointed lunch hour. I felt guilty about it, but then I realized that doing that every once in a while is actually healthy for me. (or so I told myself). :-)

My logo, thanks to the very talented Jimmy Egeland.