Work at home mum tries to get motivated

Make cup of tea, stare vaguely out of the window for a little while, check emails in case someone interesting has decided to spontaneously offer me work and/or a love affair…

And so begins my first day back at work.

I work at home, and most of the time I love it. It can be difficult sometimes to get motivated, and admittedly a lot of my time is spent in forums, obsessing over blog stats, or compulsively refreshing my emails, but I’m pretty sure that’s what most people do in offices anyway, I just have the bonus of not having to worry about anyone looking over my shoulder.

School holidays are hard though. My study is right there at the top of the stairs, trying to lure me in every time I go to the bathroom. My laptop stares at me, sometimes I swear it winks – it is trying to seduce me.

I want to switch off, to be spending Quality Time with the children, baking cookies, toasting things on sticks around an open fire and other such wholesome activities I am led to believe happen in other families. But it is difficult. How do you leave work behind you in the holidays when your office is inside your house??

Today Belle went back to school and I had six whole hours in the house on my own, the solitary day to myself that I have been craving for nearly three weeks. Oh the joy! The decadence of roaming the house alone, no Disney channel soundtrack to my day, nobody asking me things or wanting things! It is bliss.

For an hour or so anyway. And then it gets a bit dull and I wish there was someone there to gossip with, to look over my shoulder and ask if facebook really constituted work. Perhaps I’ll just have a little check of my emails, who knows what the last twenty minutes may have bought me…

Follow:

6 Comments

  1. Heidi
    8 January, 2010 / 10:02 am

    Haha, love this! All too familiar. Although you know you have got gossip-mates ready and willing to help at any time… are you on MSN? Because you know a little virtual-office banter always helps me focus :) Hx

    • 8 January, 2010 / 2:54 pm

      I actually had to get rid of msn… can you imagine how little work I would get done otherwise?? :-)

  2. Lis Sheppard
    8 January, 2010 / 3:06 pm

    Yes, I agree, it is v.hard to get motivated sometimes! However, tis useful being ahome worker when you are snowed in and school is either cancelled or impossible to get to due to lack of school bus, four wheel drive to traverse our driveway etc. All good fun eh? It is def time to make cup of tea and leave freezing cold office that has rats running about in the ceiling above. Lovely.

    • 11 January, 2010 / 9:35 am

      Rats in the ceiling?? Ergh! I am going into town to find a cafe-office this morning, to take me out of the house and stop me messing around on the internet…

  3. 10 January, 2010 / 6:52 pm

    “activities I am led to believe happen in other families”

    Don’t you believe it, there’s no such thing as a normal family these days, lol.

    Steve

    • 11 January, 2010 / 9:33 am

      It must be some kind of conspiracy then to make me believe I am the only one not making sculptures out of egg boxes and reading chapters of Harry Potter out loud every night…

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.