In the last post, I addressed two comments I’ve heard or maybe – not admitting anything – have thought to myself from time to time. Today, we take on a doozy – childcare.

“What’s the point of working at home if she’s not taking care of her baby herself?”

There is a fine line for work-at-home moms to find the right balance for all that we do. When you work at home, you’re closer to baby (or babies) and yet you still have to find time to work. Some situations (the easy baby who sleeps a lot and plays easily alone for decent stretches) make it easy for mom to work for hours without childcare. Other situations (any toddler) make working during his waking hours a definite challenge. As discussed in comments here before, having a baby with colic or special needs cancels out virtually ALL work time while baby is awake.

Balancing working full-time or almost full-time and parenting usually requires some form of childcare. It is what it is. Of course once you realize you’ll need some sort of help, you’re on the next level of “Balance My Insane Life!” where you try to determine how much childcare and what kind you need and how much it will cost and is it really worth it. This, of course, is up to each mother to decide, but don’t be surprised if you find yourself the object of questions about your choices:

“Can’t you just work around baby’s schedule?”

“Why even be home if you’re sending her out?”

“Is this what’s best for the baby?”

“I thought you were home to be with her more often?”

When you’re confronted, you can ignore the questions or you can respond with your own situation and philosophy. I’ve seen a nice comment here on this blog already about the quality of the time together is better when mom and baby have some time apart. It’s also true that older babies need socialization with other children so why not use that play time to work? Whatever – it’s your choice how to handle it.

Personally, I opted to focus on my kids when they are with me and awake and work only when they are sleeping or hanging out with dad. I was feeling too split during the daytime and realized that compartmentalizing my time for work and….my other work let me focus on the kiddos when they needed Mom most and left me free to not think about cramming  in the writing until it was “work time.”

Does this limit the number of hours I can work? Sure – but I make more in 18 hours a week than I do teaching. I can live with it until they fly off to college some day and I feel like retiring from the classroom.

Plus with two boys under five, there was no quiet time in my life for more than a quick comment or email check anyhow. It works for me, but it’s a sacrifice of “me” and “us” time at night that might not work for you. I will say that both adults in my household work online at night, so we can flirt and chat via IM from about three rooms over – I realize that we are not normal, but at least we’re brilliant.

As you consider the move to becoming a full-time freelance writer you should also think about how your other expenses will increase.

Your utility bills will probably go up. You’ll be at home more hours during the day and you’ll be using your computer, lights, and the television more often. If you typically adjust the thermostat on your heating and cooling system before you go to work, you won’t keep getting these cost savings if you don’t continue to make the adjustment once you start working from home. The same thing goes for your water usage.

You may spend more money on food. You’ll probably be eating more meals at home, so your grocery bill may increase. Of course, this all depends on what you spend on lunch right now. If you switch from eating breakfast and lunch out everyday to eating those meals at home, your food expense may decrease. The opposite can happen if you typically eat at your work’s cafeteria where meals may be cheaper.

You must purchase your own office supplies. When you work for someone else, the employer typically pays for things like paper, pencils, etc. As a freelance writer, you bear the cost of these expenses. I wouldn’t expect to spend a tremendous amount on office supplies, but this all depends on how you work.

Regular household expenses might increase. You’ll be at home more throughout the day, so it makes sense that you’ll consume more of those everyday items like tissue, paper towels, and trash bags, which your employer furnishes. You should increase your budget for these items.

Fortunately, the increased cost of working from home can be deducted on your income taxes. You can count things like office supplies and the internet as business expenses. You may also be able to take the home office deduction, which helps compensate for the increase in utilities you face from working at home.

Which of your expenses have increased since you started freelancing full-time?

You’ve surely heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. If there’s one meal you shouldn’t skip, breakfast is it. So what do you do if breakfast time happens to fall within your work day, or you only have a few minutes to eat because you have to rush a project for someone? It’s easy to just sit down at your desk (or wherever you work) when you work at home. It’s easy to forget about breakfast. And sooner or later during the day you might find your energy zapped if you do forget to eat.

To help make sure you never have to skip breakfast for lack of time, this week let’s share some simple, quick, no-cook breakfast ideas. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Yogurt — I have low-calorie ones for snacks, but for breakfast I’ll go with a more substantial 200+ calorie organic variety — also good for the probiotics. I like to put ground flax in my yogurt too, although not everyone likes it with the added texture.
• Bagels — Sure, you could toast it if you have the time, but if you get them fresh rather than frozen, you can just eat them as-is too — with your favorite topping of course. I like Thomas’ whole grain (or whole wheat?) ones personally.
• Cereal – I don’t eat cereal often because I don’t like milk. But it’s another good option. When I do have it, I like to try different whole grain varieties — none of that sugary kids’ stuff. I didn’t even like that as a kid. If I’m making breakfast a big meal I might do granola. Otherwise I’d choose a lower calorie variety. Quick tip: if you don’t like flax, you can also add bran flakes to yogurt. It’s delicious, and another way to work cereal in.
• Fruit – You could have a piece of fruit with the other breakfast ideas here, or you could have it alone. Make a quick fruit salad for example. When I’m really not in the mood for fresh fruit, sometimes I’ll just have canned fruit instead (either in natural juice or a light syrup to cut down on some of the morning sugar — no point in encouraging a sugar crash).
• Cottage Cheese – I know some people are grossed out by cottage cheese, but I love it. I find it to be a surprisingly filling breakfast. I usually buy the Live Active cottage cheese from Breakstone, in individual-sized containers. I eat it plain, but you could try it with fruit. You can also put it on a piece of whole grain bread if you want something more substantial.
• Smoothies — Technically this is a no-cook breakfast, but it might take a bit longer to make than the others. Take your favorite fruit, some ice, and some milk (or soft tofu if you prefer). Blend it up. Drink it up. Yummmm.
• Granola Bars / Breakfast Bars — If you need something super-quick, keep granola bars, cereal bars, or other breakfast bars right at your desk. Then you won’t even have to go to the kitchen before starting work. Breakfast will be there waiting for you!

What are your favorite no-cook breakfast ideas for a busy work morning?

I might be brilliant, but I’m not dressing up for you.

I have no idea what people like to picture when you’re on the phone chatting about projects reaching into the four digits. I put on a great business persona, but more often than not you’ll find me sitting in pajamas with a sink full of dirty dishes in the background. I’m barefoot. My clothes are covered with the paint I used in the kitchen last summer and I’m sure as hell not wearing a bra. In my universe, by 9pm when I’m just settling down for a good night’s round of work, I look like I just woke up or I’m on my way to bed. Which I am…in four more hours.

Yes, I’m really too busy to clean my house.

People who don’t have children seem to have this image of work-at-home moms as having all the time in the world. After all, the moms you see on television have hours to sit and gossip over coffee in an immaculate kitchen while the baby naps. Not in my world. A real working mom is frantically busy all of the time – at least until the kids get old enough to be granted some independence giving mom some blessed independence, too. In the meantime, there have to be sacrifices. In this household, it’s the chores that go out the window. Who really needs clean sheets anyway?

I actually like this job, thank you very much!

I created my own business because I wanted to use my skills and abilities as a source of income. I’m not stupid. I’m not gullible. I’m not in this as a hobby, and I’m not doing this just to give me a “creative outlet” while I’m playing house. If you tell me that I am not serious about this because I’m a WAHM or try to take advantage of me thinking I’m not savvy enough to know how the internet marketplace works, shame on you. I like to write. I’m not looking for a bit of extra money to buy myself a little treat. I’m not doing this until I go back to work. I am at work. And I’ll be here long after the kids have grown.

My Four-Year-Old Banker

Running your own business means watching the money come in floods and droughts, even if the work is steady. This week especially, I’m waiting on an international wire to process a full week after I needed it for some bills. While this random money pattern is normal in our universe, the outreach of it is not.

For example, my son filled up his sticker chart for school participation thus earning a large prize from Mom. Excited, he asked to go and pick something out right this very second. My response? “Sorry baby, I’m waiting on a wire to come in.”

Rather than look confused, my four-year-old just nodded his acceptance and ran off to play. I’ll have the only kindergartner next year experienced in IBANs.

Computer Central

I have two children under five (barely since one will be five in a couple of week and the other thinks he is already five), but we have enough computers in my household to start our own computer lab. Each of my children has his own computer. That’s right – my two-year-old has a computer. And he’s about the age that my oldest was when he learned to use it.

I’ll never forget the day one of my Master’s professors was explaining something to a classroom full of….older-than-me folk, and I caught myself legitimately thinking – bah, my toddler can do that. Not in a sarcastic way. As to why we have five computers in a household with two adults and two little ones, I’m married to a man who builds the things and can fix just about anything. He’s a hardware guy – very sexy for a software girl, I tell you.

Tales of Exhaustion

My favorite WAHM stories are those that stem from being purely exhausted most of the time holding down two jobs, raising two kids and never getting enough sleep. Some of that is on me for the hours, I keep, but still – have you ever gone to do a five-minute-leg-shave and removed a large Spiderman sticker from the outside of your calf? And then did you realize you have no idea how long it’s been there – it might have been more than twenty-four hours thanks to your erratic schedule.

I’ve also handed, or really tried to hand, a three-month-old a banana repeatedly while he slept in his swing. I’ve fallen asleep in the middle of saying prayers with little ones and done no telling how many other crazy things without ever realizing it.

In fact, just a few hours ago I caught a big WAHM mistake planning birthday parties with another mom. My message to her, “I’ll be sending over the real invoice soon, but his party will be on May 1…” Really? Now I’m invoicing my son’s friends to attend superhero parties. Fortunately I caught it and changed it to read “invitation”, but if I hadn’t she would have laughed it off anyway – she knows the life.

The Power of Mom

Stickers, invoices and assumed narcolepsy aside, children are a product of their environment. Mine might have a tired, flighty mother at times, but they also have a mother who works hard to give them the things they need to grow and find their own successes. They have a mother who runs a very visible business in our home, and they have already have internalized what it means to work, to own a company, to handle money matters.

I have no idea what my children want to do – one is shooting for a horticulturalist and the other wants to be a dragon – but they are growing up with a true gift. They have a front row seat to how much a human can do cheerfully and well for the joy of it. I hope my hard work gives then what they need to live a life without limits.

I’m a grazer. I like to eat a little bit a lot throughout the day instead of eating much larger but less frequent meals. I like to have things around that don’t involve cooking (especially now that the weather’s heating up here). I like to be able to go to the other room, grab something, and get back to work. I’m sure I’m not the only freelance writer who likes to have little things on-hand. So in light of that I thought we’d kick off this half of the series by listing some of our favorite reasonably healthy snacks that can be kept on-hand for when you’re working from home.

Here are my favorites:

• Yogurt (which I add milled flaxseed to)
• Individually-sized packages of cottage cheese
• Fresh mozzarella cheese
• Pistachios, macadamias, pecans, walnuts, and other nuts (either lightly salted or raw)
• Natural fruit rolls / fruit leathers (for when I really want a sugar kick)
• Mini dill pickles
• Berries and grapes (although you could keep almost any fruit around)
• 100 calorie serving sizes of lite fruit cocktail
• Mini whole grain bagels (and a light cream cheese or no sugar added fruit preserves)
• Whole grain tortilla chips and salsa for when I need a saltier snack and want to avoid things like potato chips

Do you have favorite simple snack ideas that you think other freelancers might be interested in? Share your ideas for some reasonably healthy snacks that writers could turn to when they’ve got the mid-morning munchies. :)

One of the sometimes best / sometimes worst aspects of freelancing is how much time you’ll spend working alone. While it can be nice to avoid the politics and drama of a traditional office environment, there is also no 5pm closure reminding you to go home and no one to talk to on a whim (especially if you’re working in the dead of night). If you live alone on top of working alone, it can be even worse. Maybe you’ll even start talking to yourself. But what would happen if someone else were actually listening in, and you weren’t quite as alone in your head as you thought?

That’s what we’ll explore in this episode from the MadLance series, “Late Shift.” Can you relate at all to Chuck? (By the way, Chuck is played by Clint Osterholz, our very first guest star here at Freelance Theater, so be sure to welcome him!)

Download “Late Shift” (right-click and save the .mp3 file) or stream it now below.

 

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How do you deal with too much alone time as a freelance writer? Do you have family at home with you? Do you constantly network with colleagues to keep you sane? Do you every find yourself talking to your pets or even yourself? Share your work-alone tips for freelancers in the comments.

If you would like to embed the player for this episode on your own website or blog, please use the embed code below to get the same player you see above in this post:

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Over the past few weeks I’ve come to realize that my long-distance workout buddy and I are far from alone. A lot of freelancers are overweight or they simply make unhealthy decisions in the name of the job. Let’s face it. One of the biggest downsides of working from home is the siren call of the kitchen.

Rather than work on these goals alone, I’m going to drag all of you along for the ride. Don’t worry. It’ll only involve 2 new posts per month, and we’ll cover them during some weekend downtime so you can decide if you want to put the ideas to use in the following work week (Mondays are a great time for fresh starts).

Here’s the plan:

• 1st Saturday of the month – A post on fitness for freelancers (workouts with freelance writers in mind)
• 3rd Saturday of the month – A healthy recipe idea (often they’ll be snack ideas or lunch ideas — things you’d want to have on hand to eat during the work day to avoid temptation, but without eating bland and boring crap — things you can hopefully enjoy).

The post series really will be tailored to freelance writers. I promise. We’re not going to slowly start turning into a fitness blog (although I do plan to launch one of those eventually at FitYear.com to keep me motivated in my own weight loss and other fitness training work). If people seem to like it, then I might expand it into an every-Saturday series, and we might take things further eventually. We’ll see.

If you have specific recipes you’d like me to share, or workout ideas you think would be great for freelance writers, I hope you’ll chime in with your comments on the first post this Saturday to give each other some ideas on staying healthy while working from home.

Money Matters: Private or Public

I’m not the norm when it comes to money matters. I don’t really care if anyone knows what I make. I know others feel differently, of course. I think my laid-back position comes from the teaching side of my life. The whole world knows what I’m “worth” as a teacher since the rates are posted in cute little tables that have to be approved by the school board. One newspaper in my area even lets the public search an online database of teacher salaries to learn how much of their tax money is spent on administrators and teachers.

So when someone comes to me and asks me how much I make teaching, I can bust out my handy table and show that that with my Master’s degree and eight years of teaching experience I make an impressive $47,917 per year. But they don’t care about that – everyone knows teachers are generally underpaid for what they do. They want to know how much I make writing not because they are judging me, but instead are hoping that I’ll share the golden secret of HOW to make that amount working 3 hours a day. (They often forget I work 3 hours a day, six to seven days a week – without vacations.)

Sharing Income

I’ve seen a few blogs where writers disclose how much they make to others in hopes of inspiring new writers to drop the low-paid gigs and move up. A few of us who contribute to this blog played around on a joint blog once trying to reach six figures in a year. Others share their monthly income and project load to inspire others and show their improvement. I don’t normally do that. But I might now. Why?

• I have no shame.
• I really don’t care – the IRS already knows how much I make, or will on the 15th of next month.
• Too many people think making $500 or $1,000 a month is outstanding – which it is if you’re working at less than minimum wage.
• Writers are often discounted by webmasters and other professionals who don’t realize the difference between the pros and those who…aren’t.
• If I make a big post about how much money I make writing, I can just steer people here when they work up the courage to ask me how much “something like that writing thing pays.”
• I’m a bit proud of myself, really. I work only in the evenings after a very full day of other responsibilities and have done rather well for myself.
• Hell, maybe someone out there can see how much a WAHM can actually make when she markets her skill as a real service-oriented business.

Skip the drum roll.

In 2009, I made a net profit of $55,482.33.

Not bad for a little “part-time writing thing.”

It’s the most common question asked of freelance writers around the world that gets under my skin.

“Will you show me how to do what you do?”

Answer: Probably not.

Why? Because, quite simply, if I have to show you how to do it, you probably won’t end up doing it. There. I said it.

Granted, there are plenty of tricks to the trade and I can help you build a business if you’re really serious about getting started, but it’s my experience that about 95% of the people, stay-at-home moms included, who ask me to show them the way don’t really mean it, don’t have the business sense to make it work or think it’s just a fun little hobby that happens to pay pretty well. They don’t even blog. They’ve never posted a comment. Some have no clue what a forum or blog is. And I just don’t have time to keep telling the world how to do what to do if they aren’t going to actually do it.

If you’re the 5% that’s huffing and offended right now, I commend you for being serious about this. And for that 5%, I’ll give you some real tips from one mama to another.

Plenty of mothers, especially those that stay home, are looking for ways to earn a few extra bucks without sacrificing time with their children. This is why the WAHM forums are full of moms working for pennies on projects here and there. They just want a bit more spending money. Pocket money is one thing, but a full-blown career is something else. Getting from one point to the next is not a matter of landing better gigs – it’s a full mentality shift.

When another person asks me how to get started or how to get her daughter or son started writing online, I used to try to give everyone tips and pointers. I’ve written tomes of emails that rival some ebooks and tried to point out the dos and don’ts of getting started online. Now, for the most part, I’ve given up doing all of that. When someone asks me to teach them what I do, I just give them my email address and ask them to email me when they want to talk about setting up a professional online presence and building a portfolio. Of the dozens of emails I’ve given out, I’ve gotten exactly NO inquiries. Go figure.

That being said – I’ve helped more than a few budding writers over IM strangely enough. Maybe that’s the litmus test I need for finding someone serious about writing online. If they have IM, or PM, for that matter, they are far enough along to need help – not a career coach.

Building a writing career is not simple. There are wonderful ways to write as a hobby online and plenty of moms (and others) do exactly that. But regardless of offspring, there only seem to be a handful of people who are serious about building a career in writing. The minute someone serious comes along, this work-at-home (and work-away-from-home) mama will certainly help, especially another mom who’s looking for a way to afford staying home with her kids during the day. Hey, I’m certainly not heartless. I’m just tired of shelling out my career secrets for someone who struggles to pull up Internet Explorer for something other than Facebook games.

If a mom or anyone else isn’t willing to take the first step, she just isn’t serious enough for me. Working at home might seem frivolous to the outside observer, but when there are twenty-four hours in a day and you’re working your not-so-little butt off all but seven of them, you just don’t waste time on those who don’t have the stamina or risk-taking nature to give it a real go.

Will I help someone serious about learning to write professionally? Absolutely! Will I hold their hand and give them an illustrated guide to how the world of web writing works? Probably – but only if they are savvy and dedicated enough to take the first step. Email me if I give you my address. Research the topic the same way you research how to make salt dough ornaments. Google it for goodness sake! If you can’t do that – you’ll never have the chops to make it.

Now I’m off to write loving notes to tuck into the lunchboxes of my little angels.