A new chapter

I mentioned in a previous blog that I've made another major change in my life and it is this: I resigned from my job and I am now working as a freelance writer and clinical hypnotherapist. As a single parent with a morgtage and responsibilities this is quite a scary move, but I was finding it more and more of a challenge to juggle work with school  holidays, sick days, snow days, teacher training days etc. Any working parent knows how hard this is. The DDs are now too old to need a childminder or holiday club; they just want to hang out with their friends, go swimming, shopping, bike riding, and have a base to come home to when they want feeding, fall out with each other or need a change of clothes before they go off again. Although I've been incredibly lucky to have friends and family who looked after them for me, on the whole I felt that if I had the choice to offer them me working at home, then I should do it, hopefully reducing stress levels all round. I qualified as a hypnotherapist over a year ago so I'm putting this into practise on a more regular basis,  and I will also write features for magazines, websites and anything else that I can snag. Oh, plus I have set myself a goal to finish my novel by November.

Of course the DDs have heard me say enough times in the last few weeks that I will be working from home (in the generating money kind of way, rather than the hard slog for no pay or recognition SAHM kind of way I did during their early years), though I'm not convinced they have quite grasped how this will work in reality. DD1 looked quite shocked that I was up, showered and getting dressed as usual when she cheekily tried to commandeer my dressing table and hair dryer this morning. "But I thought you'd be having a lie in!" she said.

I'm sure I'll be pulling my hair out in the loooong summer holidays, trying to fit clients and assignments around the DDs social lives. I envisage much synchronising of watches and texting to remind them to pay attention to the 'Do not disturb' note on the front door if I have a client here, or 'ssshing' if I'm trying to conquer writer's block. But it has to be worth a go. Once we all get used to this new way of life, I hope we find we have the best of both worlds. I'll keep you posted.