Okay, here goes…
Hello blogosphere! It’s been a while, how are you doing?
Yes it’s true, I committed one of blogging’s deadly sins by not posting any content for, ack! nearly one whole year!! But I’m back now and hopefully I won’t be punished too hard for my transgression. 🙂
I’ve written about some of the pros and cons of freelancing before, and I thought now would be an apt time to continue on that theme, by way of explaining my absence.  Today’s pro/con is the ability to spend more time with your kids, in my case, brand new baby Zoë (now 6 months old!).
I often hear that people started freelancing so they could spend more time with their kids. That made perfect sense to me, before Zoë came along. But now I can’t figure out how these people achieve this while still being productive enough to earn a reasonable income!
I didn’t fully comprehend how time-consuming having a baby is until I was pregnant. Even before the Big Event, baby-related thoughts, feelings and ailments of one kind or another (not to mention appointments!) took over my life. Since Zoë arrived, I have regained some ability to focus, and the physical discomfort went away, but I no longer have that treasured commodity – time!
Like fellow translator and new mom Sarah Dillon, who revealed her own new arrival on her blog a couple of months back, having a baby around has made me re-examine my priorities, and try to figure out how I can make time for blogging.
Now that I’ve started working (and blogging) again, I’ve realized two things, the first being that I still have next to no time to myself and need to figure out how to work from home and look after a baby at the same time. The so-called advantage of working from home seems to be more of a disadvantage at the moment. Maybe it’s too soon? Or maybe other people’s babies sleep more during the day, I don’t know!
The second thing I’ve realized is that I need to blog in a way that works for my family, my business and me as well as my colleagues and clients. What this means is I will be posting less frequently than previously (hopefully more than once a year though!), and the topics I write about will probably change somewhat too.
So that’s where I am right now, facing another challenge of freelancing, and attempting to revive this blog. I hope whoever was reading last year joins me again and I hope new readers will come along for the ride too. Even though the frequency of posts will be less (I’m aiming for monthly), my goal is still for this blog to be awesome, both for me and for you! 🙂
And, if you feel so inclined, you can help me achieve this; one of the most enjoyable parts of blogging for me is reading your comments, so please leave some below! I’d especially love to hear if you have re-jigged your work-at-home routine to accommodate a new family member. 🙂
Glad to have you back! Monthly posts sounds like a good goal to ease back into it. Better fewer posts consistently than overloading yourself and then feeling overwhelmed!
I hear you… I get the impression that freelancers who blog regularly and have an active social media presence apparently have no kids or their kids are 10+ or they have two baby-sitters or very peaceful kids that don’t climb over laptops and destroy them. Just an impression 🙂
Exactly Magda! I haven’t figured it out yet, but hopefully my available time will continue to increase as my daughter gets older. And my husband and I alternate work days and childcare days now, which gives me a chance to be more productive! Do you have kids at home while you work?
As from when my kid turned 3 and went to school things are a lot better. If you need any tips, ask. 🙂 I’m voting this for best blog post at proz.com Comm.Awards.