A work-life balance is not something I thought about before accepting my first job out of college. I was very good about separating work from home life, but my second job was different. Add in becoming a mom, it seemed impossible.
The ability to maintain work-life balance is heralded as a way to preserve your sanity
Especially in a world where many people now work from home, scheduling your time is essential to your well-being. The problem is that many people have a hard time disconnecting from their work.
Smartphones have caused this problem by providing us with constant contact and the ability to sync our work email to our phones. When we should be quitting for the day, we find ourselves obsessed with clearing our icons or sneaking in some extra work when we should be doing other things.
This was a problem for me when I was still working full-time before I had kids. I was expected to answer emails and take calls after I left the office for the day. Sometimes, lunches weren’t even my own when I had to check off meetings with clients. It was irritating and unfair.
The expectation to constantly be on-call is not sustainable
You burn out and cannot maintain the hustle.
Once I became a mom, I realized that kids were more time-consuming and demanding than this job was. I knew I would come to resent the expectations and drown in the guilt of not spending enough time with my kids.
Because of this, I decided to stay home with them. For the first few years, I didn't even attempt to work in addition to taking care of them. Caring for a newborn is a 24-hour-a-day job, lived in two-hour increments of play/eat/sleep. Sometimes more than one at a time. For instance, eat and sleep if you're breastfeeding. Trying to add more things on top is impossible. Instead, you lean into survival mode and only do the necessary things.
Now that my kids have gotten a bit older, I can dedicate some time to work from home. Moving on from the newborn stage is bittersweet but also freeing. Your kids are no longer attached to you 24/7, and you get a chance to come up for air.
I've always been a workaholic and need to tread carefully not to overextend myself
This tendency has become a problem, and I often need to pull myself back. Trying to fit in as much work as possible while taking care of two kids age 5 and under means that I hardly ever stop working.
The thing is, as moms, we never stop working anyway
Whether it is a work-from-home gig or the responsibilities of being a mom, we have a hard time slowing down and taking time for ourselves. There's always something else to do. Another dish to wash. Another pitch to send. Another book to read. A work-life balance doesn't exist for moms. It's all just life. Life has changed, and we need to adapt along with it. All the while, trying not to burn out by making sure to take breaks as we need them.
