On Paper, It's Simple

When my daughter was born almost 3 years ago, I was working full time. Although the job was great on paper, I truly couldn't stand it. It was almost a crying-every-morning-as-I-got-out-of-bed type of job. There were alot of things I couldn't stand about it, but first and foremost I was working for an super-extra-large company where the work that I did mattered pretty much only to my boss and his boss. My boss and his boss were both generally disliked so our chain of command was pretty much classified as "the red-headed-step-child" of the department. My responsibilities mostly depended on other people completing their responsibilities, so there was an unbearable amount of waiting around. Oftentimes I would spend my day surfing the internet or having extra long lunches due to the lack of work, but when my colleagues sent me their completed items at 4:45pm and went home, I would wind up having to stay for another 3 - 4 hours to put their information into my highly convoluted spreadsheets. All around it sucked and although the medical benefits were truly amazing, I couldn't stay there. It wasn't for me. Or my desire to stay sane.

Since my days were often spent waiting for other employees to complete their work, I had a good amount of time on my hands. I started daydreaming of starting my own business and working for myself. Those daydreams eventually turned to serious thinking. Why couldn't I do something on my own? I went through a number of opportunities until I found the right one, and within a few months, Long Island Parent Source was born. Described as an online guide that centralizes resources for families on Long Island, it slowly gained popularity. I soon left my job for a part time job, giving me the ability to put more work into the site. We all know how that ended, so we''ll just move on.

Right now, I find myself with time. As a mom, I've become accustomed to saying and feeling "I just don't have time" but now that Aaron is in school and Camryn is with our babysitter, during the daytime working hours, I truly have time. Time to work. Time I should be spending calling businesses, educating them about the site, giving them information and working with them to get their business listed in our directory. Because businesses listing in our directory means that they pay actual money. Doesn't seem so hard, right?

Wrong. On paper, it sounds so simple. Pick up the phone. Dial. Tell someone about the site. Get them listed. The end. In actuality, it's not that easy. Why? Because I am scared. Petrified. Like ready to vomit and have an anxiety and panic attack and want to cry at the thought of the dreaded S word - SALES. There are so many reasons this shouldn't be an obstacle for me. Generally I can talk to anyone. I love the site. I am so passionate about helping families and helping businesses. It's an easy thing for me to talk about. And the ultimate reason being that if this website doesn't work out for me on the sales front, I'm on my way back to an office job working for someone else - something I DO NOT want to do. Under any circumstances. Because I've tasted the sweetness of this independent life and I want it to continue. Forever and ever.

I love having the freedom to work for myself. I work during the day but can also run errands, be visible at both of my kids' schools and spend time with my kids after school. The other side of it is that I wind up putting in more hours than I would at another type of job because there's no guaranteed paycheck hitting my bank account every other Friday.

So today, I put on my big girl underwear (it's an expression, my friends) and made 10 (count 'em, TEN) cold calls to local businesses. Nine bowling alleys and a book store. One person didn't even let me speak before he hung up on me, others transferred me to someone's voice mail and still others gave me a name of someone I should speak to. The important thing to me though was not getting someone on the phone, it was actually dialing the number and speaking when the person answered the phone. Not hanging up on someone was a HUGE milestone for me. Yes, pretty sad, I know, but this is me. And I did it. Really did it. And I didn't vomit. Or have a panic attack. Or get struck by a lightning bolt coming out of the sky.

Today I'm pretty proud of myself. I'm making a goal for 2009 is that twice each week I will call 10 businesses. And then the following week I will follow up with those businesses. I will become the type of salesperson that businesses want to talk to because I will prove to them that I am here to help them, not to shmooze them into sending me a check. 2009 will be a great year for me. For LIParentSource.com. For my family. Because we will all be successful in everything we set out to do.

I Finally Did It.....

Over the summer, I posted here about a crossroads that I had come to in my life with respect to my work and my career. I am happy and sort of proud to say that I have surpassed the crossroads as of this past week. It sort of goes back a long way.

Around the time I got pregnant with my daughter, I was working full time at a job that I knew wasn't my whole future. I was the Controller for a retail chain of stores and worked in a small office, but made good money and liked my job. I had been working there for about 2 years when I got pregnant with Camryn, and slowly realized that I was working in a total boys club. Pretty much if you weren't a man in their inner circle, your days were numbered. I wasn't sure exactly how numbered my days were until about a month after I announced I was pregnant, my job was eliminated. Clearly illegal disturbing, but a story for another time.

Here's a fact - being pregnant and job hunting are not a very desirable combination for any potential employer. I did find a job, and surprise of all surprises, it was actually a better job than I had been pushed out of let go from. They were very nice and supportive, I worked for 4 months and then took maternity leave for 3 and came back to my job there waiting for me. Only now that I wasn't pregnant anymore and had two children at home, this job was not where I wanted to be. I decided that I wasn't going to be one of those women who complained all the time that they had to work and mope around about it, because I truly didn't want any misery to overflow into my personal life and my time with my family. So I gave myself a time frame - I knew I wanted to do something for myself and I gave myself six months to figure out exactly what that was going to be and then a year to implement it to the point where I could leave my job.

In that time period, LIParentSource was born. Through ParentClick, I had the opportunity to start a business, do something on my own and service parents in my area by providing a resource to make their lives easier.

A few months later, I was given the opportunity to take a job working 3 days per week with a flexible schedule and flexible hours. This meant so many things to me - I could be around for my kids 2 days during the week, take them to school, put my son on the bus for camp and work on my new business. Two whole days sounded like alot of time.

At first the job was great. Small company. Family owned. Great values. Flexible schedule. But then the little things started creeping up. I called in sick. Once. And it was an issue. Alot of little things that made me feel like I wasn't given the tools to get this job done the way that I wanted to. 100%. And I don't do anything half-assed, so I felt like I was failing. So many times I felt like I was drowning, like I just couldn't keep my head above water.

My husband tried to get me to quit, but I felt like such a spoiled brat. How could I walk away from a job that paid me a good salary to work part time? From a job that gave me a flexible schedule? From a job that gave me the security of a paycheck let allowed me to be around my kids? But there was another side. It was also a job that for what it was, was causing me alot of stress. A job that was a total joke in the skill that was required for the work that was assigned to me and that I could do with my eyes closed. A job that gave me anxiety about going there almost every day. A job that generally was making me miserable and unable to enjoy the other aspects of my life.

So last week during a conversation with the company owner, we started discussing the things that I was doing. And I voiced my opinions about how I was not being given the tools to get done what I needed to get done. About how I felt that without these tools I was going to fail. And about how I needed certain things to give the company what it needed and what they wanted. He pushed back, and pushed back hard. At the end of the conversation, I found a voice inside of me that I never knew existed. Once it started talking, it seemed to take on a life of it's own. And it was standing up for me, giving me what I wanted, even if I wasn't able to take it myself.

The voice said, "Maybe this just isn't working out." And that was the end, I am now an ex-employee.

And so the next chapter of my life begins, and it's frightening. I see such great things for my own business, I have such ideas and things I want to do. But my excuse of just not having the time is no longer there as a crutch. It's no longer an excuse. If I fail now, it's because I failed. And that's something that is not an option.

Star of the Day

"Why aren't you listening?" This has become my mantra to my 5 year old son. Lately he's been pretty much ignoring everything we say. If he's tapping and we say, "Stop tapping", he does it again. If he's running around the house and we say, "Stop running around the house," he runs one more time. If he's jumping on the couch and we say, "Stop jumping on the couch," he jumps a few more time. If he's...okay. I'm sure you get it.

The "stop jumping/running/yelling/spinning" is usually followed by, "Did you hear me?" Of course he did, and then we talk about going to the doctor and getting his hearing checked. "I heard you though!" Exactly! So why didn't you listen??

After a not-so-great-listening weekend last weekend, we decided that we would implement a rewards system. For every day that he is a good listener, he gets a star. After 5 stars, Daddy will take him to Dave & Busters. The first question he asked, "Do the 5 starts have to be in a row?" Smart kid, right? "Yes," we told him, "they have to be in a row."

Day 1 was good. He listened to the babysitter, didn't torture his sister too much, listened to me when I got home and was generally pretty good. Ahh, I thought, we're on our way.

Day 2 was good too. When I got home, babysitter said he was great. He had a playdate over and was pretty good, included his sister, got along with his friend, didn't whine. Well, whined once. But in the scheme of things, and thinking about our weekend, I'll take it. Wow! This is all we had to do? I should have done this reward thing earlier, it's working great. Am I going to have to bribe my kid fo the rest of his life? If all it takes is Dave & Busters (and not a car at any point), I'm good. Let's hear it for bribery!

Day 3. Not so great. First he threw up on the floor. Obviously, having nothing to do with listening, but I thought I'd throw that in there. Puking episode over and confirming that there's no fever and he's not sick, he went to his friend's house on a playdate. When he was picked up, we learned he did not listen to the friend's babysitter. She is a lovely woman, and described her day as "sometimes challenging." Oy, that's not good. What else did he do? He didn't listen. He whined. He didn't want to eat what she served for lunch. He spit on his friend. Seriously, this is a good kid. He spit on his friend? Are you sure? Spit like saliva from his mouth??

I spoke to him on the phone. "Mommy, I'm not getting a star today," he said, clearly fighting back tears. "Why?" I asked. "I didn't listen today, it wasn't a good day." I almost felt bad. Not bad enough to give him a star anyway, but still bad.

Later we talked about his day. I was much less concerned with the not listening than I was with the spitting. Who spits on someone? I cringe just thinking about it. He said that his friend "was crying, and I was just trying to help." Now, this might make sense to a 5 year old mind. It might even sound like it could get him out of trouble. But this didn't make any sense to my 30-somthing year old mind after a lousy day of work at a job that I am teetering on leaving at any given moment. "Huh?" I asked. "What do you mean, how does spitting on someone help?" He really couldn't explain it, but insisted that was what it was.

End result of the day? No star for the day. No tv or computer for the night. But we didn't dwell on it. We didn't talk about it anymore. He played Shrek Operation with Daddy and went to bed for the night. I checked on him when he was sleeping and felt this incredible surge of love for him. You know the feeling, when you see your kids and they are fast asleep, not moving, not talking and not terrorizing anyone. You question how could this little angel ever do anything wrong?

Tomorrow will be better, I thought. He's such a good boy. When I get home from work, we'll see if he gets a star today.

It's a Juggle....

This weekend, I read a quote that I can't get out of my mind. Sara Moss, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of the Estée Lauder Companies Inc. and mother of four, said "It's a juggle, not a balance."

Truer words will never be spoken.

Before I had kids, I was very career driven. So career driven that I thought that nothing would ever come between me and my goals. Not even a kid. Especially not a kid.

Then I had my son. This beautiful, amazing little boy who I helped to create. Who I carried around in my belly for 8 months. Who made me vomit every single day in various places including (but not limited to) on the Long Island Railroad, in Penn Station and sometimes on the site of the street during my long commute into NYC. Who made me, on a daily basis, feel sicker than I had ever felt in my life. Who surprised us all by arriving almost one month early. Who was born so early that he shared a birthday with his grandma, a grandma that he would never meet. Who, when I held him for the very first time, made me realize that my life would never again be about only me. Who I loved more than anything from the moment I saw him.

When I went to college, my plan was to study psychology. Halfway through my sophomore year, I realized that when I graduated, I wanted two things - to work and to make money. So one night, doing some homework, I realized, "I'm good at math, I'll major in accounting." And that was it, I became an accounting major. I was admitted to the business school at my university and spent the next two years struggling through two years of hard classes, got a job out of college that sent me traveling all over the country auditing newspapers and sat for the CPA exam more times than I care to remember. When I passed the exam (and got engaged all in the same week), I opted out of the travel and was hired for a more corporate job, which I liked. My career path was changing, I wasn't going to be a partner in a big accounting firm, as I had once imagined. But my goals were constant - I still longed to be a high level executive, making decisions and carrying companies from bad times into better times than they ever imagined. I never thought I would ever want to stay home, I never thought I wouldn't want what I had always imagined I would have.

January 2003, enter this little boy into my life. I wanted to be with him all of the time, raise him to know right from wrong, teach him everything I could possibly pass on to him. But he did need to eat. And have clothes. And in order for him to have these basic necessities, I had to work. And someone else had to care for him. At this point, I came to a major realization. I could either accept the fact that I needed go to work every day in order for my child to have all of the things I wanted him to have. Or, I could allow this job to make me miserable and by extension, make my family miserable. The second choice didn't work for me and I dealt with the fact that I worked. And worked 10 - 12 hours per day, running 3 US offices for an advertising agency in downtown NYC. My son understood my working most of the time, but there were days when he cried. As he got older, there were days when he asked me to stay home with him. And there were days when he asked why his grandma takes him to school when everyone else's mommy takes them to school. And my heart broke. But I told him, "I have to work so we can buy you toys and lollipops." That seemed to make things okay for this little boy.

When I couldn't take the commute for one more second, I took a similar job closer to home. That ended in disaster, but that's a story for another day. And then I was pregnant with another baby, who I prayed and hoped would be as amazing as her brother. And she is, in so many ways, and in so many different ways.

After baby 2, I kept working. But my views and thoughts on working changed. Drastically. I'm not saying that once I had kids, I had no more goals. I still had goals, maybe even loftier than before. But these goals were different. They were no longer only my goals, they were our goals. As a family. A family with the most amazing children parents could ever ask for. My goals were for them to be happy. For them to be successful. For them to be the best people they possibly can. And for them to excel and reach their goals. My goals were now a means to get them there, without losing myself in the process. To keep the balls that I was juggling in the air.

There is always so much talk addressing how do you balance, Sara Moss's thought resonated with me. "It's a juggle, not a balance." There are often so many balls in the air, how could it ever be a balance? The idea is not to drop any of the balls, but if they do drop occasionally, it doesn't mean that I failed to reach what I set out to achieve. It means I have to practice a little bit more.

Anything Other Than NO....

My daughter turned 2 in March. 39 days ago to be exact. Is it possible that only 39 days in she is in the "terrible twos"? Two years ago, I had a brand new, adorable, little baby. Today, I have an adorable 2 year old who whines like there's no tomorrow and seems to only know one word - NO. No to everything. Every. Single. Thing.

Me: We're going to go to Grandma's!
Cam: NO
Me: We're almost there!
Cam: NO
Me: We're here! Yay!
Cam: I stay in car.
Me: Don't you want to see Grandma?
Cam: No. Shy to Ama.
Me: Don't you want to see Papa?
Cam: No: Shy to Papa.
Me: Don't you want to see Ari? We have to bring him home!
Can: No. I stay in car.

About an hour later...
Me: Do you want desert?
Cam: No
Me: Do you want to read Dora?
Cam: No
Me: Do you want to read Bunbun?
Cam: No
Me: Do you want to watch TV?
Cam: No

At that point, it was bed time. No matter how many no's.

Since I've had my kids, I have always worked full time. I mean, I worked full time before that, but continued full time since I had kids. For the past year, I've still been working full time, but two days of that full time are at home. My kids have always had babysitters and nannies who they loved. I might not have loved the babysitters and nannies, but that's a story for another day. Anyway...all of a sudden, this little girl is seriously attached to me and "shy to" everyone!

Maybe it's a phase. Or maybe she just loves her mommy.

Either way, the whining and "no" need to come to and end. Soon.

World's Worst Mom

Have you ever felt like the world's worst mom? I have. Yesterday. And today. And I'm afraid that I will feel like that tomorrow. Let's start with the excuses.

#1 - My husband is away. Not only is he away, but he's been away since Saturday. Which means that I was on my own most of the weekend. Today is Tuesday. And it's his birthday. It's been a long 4 days.

#2 - THe weather sucked. It poured rain yesterday and today. My dog was pissed off because he couldn't go outside. He's also pissed because my husband isn't home. So last night for about 30 minutes, he just barked. Loudly. When my kids were sleeping. He's a 90 pound dog, he does not bark quietly.

#3 - I had to work. Not at my own business, but at my job. You know, the one that pays me so that my kids can eat? At this job, I had to listen to this woman yell at me on the phone for about 30 minutes. That's 30 minutes in addition to the 40 minutes she yelled at me on Thursday of last week and the 10 minute voice mail message she left me yesterday. And guess what? She only had about 3 things that she wanted to say. Over. And over. And over again.

#4 - I was totally under the gun getting a marketing piece together for an event I'm doing on Tuesday. This one is for my own business, so it's last on the list because I only sort of mind. I'll bet though that it's at the top of my graphic designer's list of why she hated today. Every time we thought we were done, we weren't. But we finally got done and if I say so myself, the piece is awesome. I hope people like it.

So because of all of those reasons above, I think I yelled at my son for the whole 3 hours I was with him yesterday. And today. Why? Let's see....

#1 - Because when his 2 year old sister hit him (hard) he laughed. So she laughed. I said stop and she hit him again. Harder. And then he cried.

#2 - Because when his 2 year old sister pinched his tushy, he laughed. So she laughed. I said stop and she pinched him again. Harder. And then he cried.

#3 - Because he doesn't listen. He's hitting his sister. I tell him to stop. He hits her again. I tell him to stop. So he hits her again. So I yell at him to stop.

#4 - Because every time I said it was time for him to go to bed, he whined. 5 more minutes mom. Okay fine, really because I didn't want to get up either. And then it was another 5 minutes. And another 5 minutes. And finally it was 830 and he really needed to go to bed because he was rolling around on the floor. That means he's tired, in 5 year old body language.

I'm sure there were a million other reasons I yelled at him. Good reasons? Probably not. But I feel like lately I am extremely short on patience. So last night when I put him to bed, the conversation went like this:

Me: I'm sorry if I was a little not so nice to you tonight.
5 year old son: Mommy, you were nice. You just yelled at me alot. But it's okay.

Did you hear that? Yes, that was my heart breaking.

So I spoke to my friend and said I think I'm the world's worst mom. She said that she was - she was sitting on the couch with her baby son and they both fell asleep, and she dropped him. On the floor. He's okay, but did she win?

I hope tomorrow will be better.