Choosing to Work from Home

I'm still wondering how I've determined that the smartest move for my life is to become a stay at home mom who works at home. Even as I sit here with my duct tape-covered laptop while Tumble Leaf plays on the television to distract my kids, I don't understand how I thought this was the best choice for supporting my family.

Am I getting ahead of myself? It's quite possible I am. Here, let's start more at the beginning. I'll try not to get too long in the tooth with my story.

The first time I became a stay at home mom was less of a matter of choice than this time. My husband was in school, I had no job, and I was pregnant with our first child. That, of course, meant moving in with my mother and brother to the outskirts of Austin shortly after I gave birth. A year and a half later I had our son, which of course kept me at home longer.

During that time my husband finished school and started his career as a chef. When Austin proved too expensive for us to live in (or almost in), we all moved back to my hometown, San Antonio.

After many bumps in the road, it finally became apparent that staying at home with no income to speak of was just not going to work anymore. I got a job.

Getting a job after staying at home raising two small children was a breath of relief for me and my husband. For my children, it was like being tossed into the ocean in the middle of a typhoon. Being the resilient little things they are they adapted, and before long began to thrive and grow in leaps in bounds. We regained our independence and were able to live on our own again with the little family we'd made.

We struggled quite a bit in the two years that followed. We had moments of general comfort and stability surrounded by uncertainty and difficulty. But somehow we always made it work. Until we couldn't.

Two incomes somehow wasn't enough to make it all work. The constant spiral of self-doubt and situational depression had us circling the drain more often than not. We ended up back in with my mom, this time in a three bedroom, one bathroom home with a considerable pest problem.

If you're wondering what it's like to suddenly be accosted by swarming termites on a Sunday afternoon, let me tell you, it's NOT fun. At all.

So with money not really being much better, we somehow strike out on our own again. And for the smallest of moments, it seemed doable. We were closer to just about everything we needed. The rent was reasonable. Nothing could go wrong...

Almost nothing.

So, the job that I had that had so much potential at began cutting my hours. 40 hour weeks weren't a guarantee for me anymore. The bonus that used to come so easily to me was made harder and harder for me to obtain. Errors became easier to make. Write-ups were being given more and more. My clock was ticking. Something had to give before my job did.

I took a chance on a job that really didn't sound like it would suit me. After all, I needed a job with growth potential and stable hours. I quit my job after almost two years and became a "brand ambassador".

If you're wondering what that means, it means I was a sales person with a fancy title.

Yeah. Was. I didn't last very long. In fact, I only just left the job yesterday. When I blew out my knee bending down to grab a drink from under our display table and couldn't stand or walk for half an hour, I knew the job wasn't for me.

So after several long talks with my husband and my mother, I can to a very important decision. One, I can technically take back if I find this working at home thing isn't sufficient enough support my family. But at this point, desperate times call for desperate measures.

See, transportation is a big issue for us. My husband was the one who really has to commute out of the two of us before, and the job I quit would have made getting him to work and the kids to and from school and daycare impossible. We have one car for technically six people, my mother and brother included. It didn't feel right to make myself the most important person transportation wise when I wasn't even that happy about having the job in the first place.

In the time I took to decide whether I wanted the job or not, I realized it really would be better for me to just stay at home altogether. It wasn't just because of the issue with transportation though.

And now we return to the chosen image for this story. That sort of chaos in the picture is the sort of chaos that's a constant in my home. It's always an insane mess. While it's not a complete garbage pile, there's way too much that needs to be taken care of that two working parents can't manage in their few free hours and uncoordinated days off.

My husband helps, don't think that he's just a slob who lazes about expecting me to do everything. I can always rely on him to handle washing clothes and dishes. He's a chef, so of course, he cooks. Every once and a while he picks things up in the living room. Everything else though kinda falls to me.

I never felt like I had enough time to do anything. When I was home, I was too grumpy to spend time with my kids and really enjoy it. There was never enough time to get everything spruced back up before everyone else mucked it back up. I wasn't really doing anything to grow as a person, or if I was everything else was completely neglected.

Coming to the realization that being a stay at home mom was going to be the best for everyone, most of all myself, was a long time coming. I'd been feeling it for a few months and the feeling only got stronger. So I quit my job, and began tightening up my work at home game. It's going to be my new full-time gig so I'd need to make sure I hit my goals and know exactly what to invest my time into during the week.

That said, I still have no bloody idea what I'm doing. I don't even know for sure if this is going to work out or not. For all I know I could be right back in the regular working world within a month.

But I have to do something. I already know that what I've been doing isn't enough for my family or for myself. I've got to give this my all and really make it work. Will I be able to manage it? Who knows? But I won't know for sure I don't at least try.

To all of the women who have faced this choice themselves for whatever reason, I would love to hear your stories — what led to your choice to be a mother who works from home, how it's working for you, what your challenges and triumphs have been. Maybe in hearing your stories, it will me feel that my choice is the right one after all.