Friday, May 3, 2013

Spring Shed - week 7




Woohoo, I'm posting my week 7 report on time! The full back story of this blog hop hosted by Kathy at Bereaved and Blessed can be found here.

To be honest, I just can't wait for these school holidays to be over so I can get things done again! Next week won't offer much respite though, because Wednesday and Thursday are public holidays. The sitter is taking Friday off so she'll have a very long weekend (and probably 90% of the country will do the same), but M. Sensible's school is open and boy am I going to take advantage of that (I wonder how many classmates will show up though)! My SIL from Holland will be visiting, so we'll probably take some outings around the city - no need to get into the traffic jams trying to go south.

To recap my goals for this Spring Shed: my only goal is to keep finding things to not fall into complete mommy mode again (because I do think the Winter Shed accountability helped me get out of mommy mode) and so my weekly report will be on what I did to make that happen (or what I didn't do and why I fell back into mommy mode), whether that be reading more, getting more paid work, blogging more frequently etc.

So here's how I did during week 7:

I read a lot! I actually only recently (like late last week) read Mel's "Life from Scratch" and had planned to ask my sister to bring "Measure of Love" with her but when I finished the first book I didn't want to wait that long to continue reading the second one! So I downloaded the Kindle app and bought the Kindle version on Amazon. Have been reading every single free minute since...

I got a request for a small project from the agency I did the web intelligence work for in November/December and March. I sent them a quote today (which should be accepted, more a formality) so I will start that on Monday when the kids are back at school/sitter (and finish it on Tuesday because it's really that small). So even though this and the translation jobs I did a few weeks ago are small (I won't really make more than about 100 bucks with it), it's nice that they are from repeat clients and that until now I still have gotten some project, however small, to work on.

However I find that this freelance, working from home thing is quite tough - it really still is more like moonlighting when I can get a few hours off from my mommy-duties, and when hubby's away on business (which is a lot) and especially if combined with school holidays (ie the kids home all day) it's really impossible to get into work-mode. I find it unprofessional telling clients that I can't respond right away because I have the kids at home etc, but it is the truth and I don't want to work too much at night either trying to give the impression that I can do everything for everyone. I have a separate post brewing in my head about this, so I won't delve much further into it now...

Other than the reading and getting the request for the project I was still mainly on mommy-duty this week and I'm longing to have some time to myself as of Monday (but at the same time looking forward to the weekend too - which should finally bring some respite from the rain we've been having).





2 comments:

Kathy said...

Yay! Welcome back for the second week in row! I appreciate you wanting a break from the kids having breaks from school. I also wonder if I am offered the PT job I applied for and decide to take it (lots of big "ifs" there), how that will work, with me trying to work from home 10 hours each week. I guess we'll see if and when it becomes an issue...

Also, I love that you just read Life from Scratch and are now deep into Measure of Love! I read Life from Scratch when it came out and Measure of Love is next on my list, as soon as I finish Lori's Open Hearted Way to Open Adoption, which I am loving (even though I am a distant start in the adoption constellation, as they aunt of two adopted children).

Hope you have a great weekend and enjoy the visit from your SIL!

Fran said...

I hear you my friend. It's really difficult to fit everything in when a day only has 24 hours. I think it's great that you manage to do some work and with your husband away a lot (if mine had to go away a lot I'd have to hire a resident nanny or I'll go insane!) you are doing absolutely brilliantly. I don't think I'd be able to manage the two of them on my own yet...Sending you big hugs, Fran