Self-Made Mom

1. Once someone says: “I’m a working mom of a young son and I’m having a hard-time balancing my current PART-TIME job” it’s fairly certain that she’s not looking to switch careers.
2. Talking really close means I have a better view of the 20 layers of mascara you’re wearing.
3. Telling someone who works in PR that you got laid off twice in the PR industry is not going to improve your chances of recruiting me.
4. While complimenting my new fabulous coat was a great pick-up line (and the coat IS fabulous), wondering who makes it and how much it costs is probably not a good second and third line.
5. If you’re going to use a Starbucks in the city’s third largest building to search for your clientele, you’d probably want to wait to approach your “tired looking mom” candidate AFTER she’s gotten her coffee.

Separated at birth?

The real string cheese incident.

Really, it’s not so appetizing when your toddler screams “cheeeeesse” every time you go to the bathroom.

Because according to Lisa Belkin’s article in today’s New York Times, no matter what we women do in the workplace, we can’t win!

There have apparently been umpteen studies by really smart scholars and consultants, and and yet, no one can give concrete on why biases against women still exist in today’s workforce.  Why women are grossly underpaid than men (although this is changing in the younger generation, woo hoo!) Why women can’t “get angry” and get away with it (have any of these folks watched Grey’s Anatomy lately?).  Why women are worse at negotiating.

I try not to pay attention to these studies, cultural phenomenons or advice.  The results and resulting opinions make me cringe.  I try not to overthink how this crazy working woman/ mom world works and just be myself.  If I’m emotional one day, so be it. If I feel like talking about my kid to my boss the next, great. If I want to be a ball-buster and kick ass at a meeting, wonderful.  I am trying not to care how people at work judge me. As you all know, I’m out of the closet.  That’s because I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not. Even if in someone else’s mind it means career suicide.

As Belkin quotes experts who say, “the data will be of value only when companies act on it, she said, noting that some are already making changes.”  But we all know how slow these changes can be and how little most companies will do to actually make it happen. So we have to make it on our own.  Change the stereotypes and perceptions little by little by doing things on our terms. To ultimately swing those studies and statistics in the right direction our own way.

Tags: Lisa Belkin, Feminine Critique, working mom,

It’s been about a week since I wrote this.  That’s like 3 months in blog years.  And I’ve been casually silent since.  But when my dad asked me today (yes, he reads my blog), “what was that post you wrote about last week?” I realized that it’s not fair to drag you all along on the journey of my mind without properly updating you along the way.

And if the last week since I wrote my unbloggable felt like 3 months, the last eight weeks since my nanny walked out on me has felt like 3 years.  Nannygate left me feeling empty, bitter and hardened against working motherhood.  That there was no point to being this stressed out.

The stress of trying to manage through a breakdown in the system created a whirlwind of self-doubt inside me.

Otherwise, why would I have hired a nanny I had mixed feelings about, but who is sweet, kind and good with my son and nearly replace her with one that turned out to be scary-psycho-emotional-bawled-me-out-made-up-her-references? (More on that another time if I can bring myself to relive that very bad week.)

Why would I contemplate quitting my dream “mom job?” (No, not that kind of a mom job.)  Why would I care what my SAHM friends (they far outnumber my working mom friends) say about what it was like to stay at home full time?  I nearly bombed a project at work by paying more attention to making playdates than PowerPoint presentations.

Why would I have had moments like this and like this and like this where I thought I was really ready for a project life change.  I could start a this! I could do a that! It’s funny - even though I counsel clients on how to deal with change, I’m not so good about dealing with it myself.

But last week when I wrote this, I was faced with the potential of giving up all that I worked so hard for at work because some people didn’t have faith in my schedule.  That my arrangement wouldn’t work.  I had the perfect out - imperfect nanny, job that isn’t quite working, adorable child at home.

And that snapped me back to reality.

Did I really want that alternative right now?  That major change?

No, not quite yet.  So I decided to stand my ground and keep things at the status quo.  Where they will remain for the time being.  I’m slowing down my quest for the “perfect” nanny or my “dream” job.

I can talk a big game and threaten everyone that gets in my way, but at the end of the day, what I really want is what I already have.  Truth is, I didn’t know how good I had it until it was almost gone. 

One of my favorite blogs is by the wacky (and I mean that very fondly) Jessica of Oh The Joys.   I don’t always understand what she writes (Highra Dohba??) but she makes me laugh, and oh, I could use a good laugh these days. 

So when I came across this post not only was I LMAO, but have had a similar experience with one of my son’s favorite books, Hug (not a Caldecott winner, but an Oppenheim winner, so nanny nanny poo poo on that, Jess.) 

Hug has no words either, but it has Bobo and Mommy.  And lots of animals who hug.  Non-freaking stop.  These animals are getting it on.  Made up captions come easy when two giraffes are seen nuzzling each other.  It’s cute and sweet.

Your trunk feels so good against my flapping ear.

But then the author had to go and add this picture, which trips up my story every time:

Sorry Jez, this looks more like a hump than a hug to me.  You’re even scaring away that little old lizard.

I’m pretty sure they don’t sell this book in Iran.

I used to think I was cool when I had nonstop conference calls.  I used to relish in meeting after meeting. I used to dramatize every late night, every busines trip, every important person I met on the job. 

LOOK HOW IMPORTANT I AM I would exude to the world.

Even I couldn’t keep up with my busy self.

No more.  I’m throwing away my busy badge of honor.  I don’t think it’s cool anymore to be sooo busy.  Soo busy with the blog, that is.  I’m having another bloggy breakdown.

I don’t think it’s so exhilarating anymore to stay up late working on css sheets I don’t really understand.  I don’t find a lot of joy waking up feeling like I’ve had a hangover because I was up late cranking out blog posts.  I don’t like it that I don’t have time to sit and talk to my friends because I am writing.  Because I feel I have to write to keep up with the masses. 

That’s not what blogging is about.  This is not what I’m about.

And something’s gotta give.

I’m not the only one who feels this way.  My friend Jill over at Silicon Valley Moms Blog is taking a much needed (and deserved) break from her blog to tend to her paying job and family.  Not that she doesn’t love the blogosphere.  The blogosphere is seriously awesome.  She just had “the talk” with her family (my talk ended up with rules, so I get it) and they asked her to tone it down a bit for a little while.  As Amy put Jill’s hiatus so brilliantly:

… we cannot expect, in life, to get something for nothing. And something we pay with our time or our privacy.

I’m paying with my time.  My precious, sweet time.  I haven’t even been blogging a year, and I’m exhausted from it.  More exhausted than from my 1.5 year old. What is that saying?  I like to write, I like to meet people, I like to have these conversations. But I also like my non-existent spare time, which is increasingly less existent with every moment I blog.

I know us moms, including myself, pride ourselves on being busy and “doing it all” but to what end?  Why do we boast that we’re so tied up we can’t watch our favorite TV shows? Why do we joke (non-kiddingly, of course) that we don’t have time to get our haircut, eyebrows tweezed or take the laundry in? I haven’t read a book in 3 months and a newspaper in a week.  That’s not something to brag about.  My latest posts have been nonstop bitching.  I’m lethargic at work.  I have come to realize that there are things I can control, and things I can’t.  I can’t control how much work my boss gives me.  I can’t control if my nanny decides to quit. 

But I can control how I spend my non-working free time.  I can decide to put away the computer for an evening (or two or three) and veg on the couch.  I can clean up those closets that are long overdue, pull the dead plants that are rotting on my doorstep and take all my newspapers to the recycling bin. 

It’s still not that easy being green.

I don’t want the happiness that I get from my blog and writing to end.  But I can’t keep up with all of it at this blog-breaking pace.  I’m an all-or-nothing kind of gal.  I don’t like to do anything half-assed.  But I don’t know how you all do it.  How you make your blogs so great, go to work AND mother! That’s why I’ll be the first to admit it here:

 I cannot do it all.

I don’t know what this quite means yet. This is the first time I’m admitting this OUT LOUD.  I just know that I need to slow down for just a bit.  Take my own break.  Blog on my own terms, not by what I think this bloggy-crazed world thinks makes sense.  This isn’t a death knell.  I’m just being as honest as I can be with all my clothes on.

Maybe I’ll just start to blog about how I’m spending my non-blogging time.

I mean, I can’t quit this nonsense altogether, can I? Can you all save me from my breakdown?

This article in USA Today inspired me to do what I have not done for six years.  Articulate and write down my memories of that fateful day so that I never forget how I felt or what I saw.  Not for sympathy, not for sensationalism, but because I subscribe to the theory that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

And so, I remember…

… a cool breeze on a beautiful fall day

… the normal subway ride to work

… thinking it was ”just” a prop plane

… the gasps and cries from coworkers

… desperate phone calls

… evacuation

… desperation

… walking alone, even though the streets were teeming with people

… bloody, sooty faces, ashy, dirty clothes

… surreal pizza lunch with friends who escaped

… weeping with joy

… weeping with sadness

… vigils and candlelight

… quiet and darkness on the streets of New York

… the smell

… the posters - on the subway, in the parks, on the lampposts, everywhere

… the never-ending news

… the desire to forget it all as if it never happened.

But it did, and I can’t.  And just because I’m getting on a plane today, and smiling, and calling a friend on her birthday, and going about my day doesn’t mean I am forgetting.  It just means that I’m living.  With all that I remember.

I’ll never forget.

[This is the post I was writing when my nanny called to quit. In case you care.] 

In an effort to create stimulating conversation with my husband and expedite my recovery from a blogging overdose, I came up with a crafty plan for “date night” last weekend.  My husband had taken the first step to actually book us a reservation well in advance of the night (Outlook e-mail invite included.)  While I appreciated his proactiveness, I knew that if I didn’t think ahead as well, we’d spend our one night out alone in two weeks mulling over the usual: job, kid, money.

I don’t think so. I wanted this night to be special, even if it was just a regular date.  We were going to our favorite sushi joint, and I didn’t want to sip my apple martini rehashing how junior ate two (TWO!) whole veggie bites for dinner.  And then made #2.  Spicy kani rolls are tasty, but not when you have an image of a large load in your mind.  You get my point.

So I made a list of some things I wanted to discuss over dinner and told my husband he had to do the same.  Of course, there were rules to our conversational engagement.  My main conversation ban was that we couldn’t talk about our son.  Not at all. His main rule was that we couldn’t talk about how I was going to spend any money.  Touche. 

We were off.

So what happened?

My husband actually started telling me things that were going on at work that I hadn’t heard about in awhile.  I lamented the misfortune of my manicurist (don’t laugh!) and her desperation to visit her daughter who she hasn’t seen in 5 years.  We talked some current events (I won’t bore you with details) and made fun of the lady sitting next to us with the REALLY LOUD VOICE.  By then, I was two drinks in and our rolls arrived.

And we all know it’s impossible to talk with your mouth full of sushi.  Mission accomplished.

When you have child care 24/7 there is no end to the time you can spend on the computer working blogging, (honey, I want to hire an au pair!)  as I have done this week.  With my husband in another state, and my parents keeping an eye on the little one I can blog when I please.  From the couch. The bed (current position).  The outdoor porch.  Wireless internet is a dangerous wonderful thing!  Problem is, with all the blogging I’ve done this week, I’ve become bloverwhelmed.  Overwhelmed by the blogosphere.  There’s so much going on tech-wise and conversation-wise out there that my blog brain is spinning.  I am living, eating, breathing, thinking blogs.  And it’s building up a vortex of blog blabber in me, so what else am I to do?  Vent.  Here I go.

1. I now have too many things I want to read, but less time than ever to do it.  It’s the ultimate blogging paradox.  The more you blog, the more blogs you pick up to read, but the less time you have to read them.  And then, if you’re like me this week, just trying to keep up, you forget what you have read (and commented on) and re-comment contradicting yourself.  That’s when you know you’ve totally maxed out.  Because it’s 10 p.m. and you haven’t showered all day and have read nothing but things that are funny and personal.  Forget reading old-school media.  Forget working.  Oh yeah, and forget taking care of my child.  I’m stumped on how people keep up with this new media world.  And to think, blogging is pretty much dead already. (Or is it? I hope not). (BONUS- If you think you might be overdosing, or at least addicted to blogging like me, check out LA Daddy’s link to this neat survey tool. I’m at 84% YIKES!)
2. I am finding that my real-life friends now may know less about me than my internet/blog friends.  I don’t have too many that overlap, so this is kind of strange situation for me.  I can’t seem to get my real-life friends to read my blog regularly, and I’m not sure I’ll ever get the chance to meet some of my internet friends who I keep up with.  But I like them both.  A lot. Do I have split blersonality disorder?
3. The blogosphere seems to be filled with hot button controversies lately.  People are getting fired up.  Which is cool, but I’m not interested in being all that controversial.  Or fired up.  I don’t like confrontation or getting into fights.  I shouldn’t care, and just go about doing what I want, but there is a nagging part of me that feels a little bird-brained for not raising awareness of some issues I do I care about on this forum.  But I’m tired.  And lazy.  Is that so bad? I really did this blogging thing to have fun.  Not to have more mommy guilt.
4. But, now that we’re on the topic of controversies I do have to mention just one thing that is one thing that is pushing my bloggy buttons - affiliate programs.  Some of my favorite bloggers have been rightly down on my fellow PR peeps who do not understand how to reach us bloggers, (which, by the way, makes me want to run up and down the hallways of my office screaming, ”please, please read our internal memos.”)  But all this conversation also makes me question those affiliate program monsters managers, too.  I’ve gotten a few e-mails lately from these non-traditional advertisers who live in the hinterlands of “I’m sort of an ad, but I’m not paying for the space, but I’m not a PR person because I don’t need you to write about me” that are making me cringe.  Trust me, I’m not above selling space on my site if it makes sense for the topic of my blog, and I won’t stick up for dumb PR people.  No way.  But I just want to put my two cents in that affiliate programs and rogue advertisers also need to read our blogs and figure out who we really are before they stalk write us for placements. People, just think before you write, and you’ll be so much better off.  And thanks for the offer, but my name is not Ali
5. Lastly, I’m totally confused by this post.  But Izzy Mom was so passionate about the topic and so many people followed and obeyed her directions, I feel like I have to do it too. But I have no clue what it means.  Am I a lemming, or what? Can someone out there on the internets help me understand this? 

Well, that’s enough venting for one night.  And since my week of 24/7 child care is coming to a close, I now have to go home to a husband that needs my attention, which really means that I won’t be blogging at all this weekend.  I think that’s probably the best way to treat this overdose.

Tags: blogging rants, affiliate programs, mom blogs, momosphere

Busy at work makes for a very bad blogger… that’s me this week.  But there’s so much awesome stuff swirling around the blogosphere right now, that I don’t want you to miss out.  Here’s some reading material until I can get my proverbial s*** together and be bloga-licious once again.

• And we think we have it rough: Apparently the glass ceiling in the U.S. ain’t got nuthin’ on the career path of women in Japan.  If you don’t believe me, read this article.  You’ll thank your boss tomorrow for letting you leave at 5 p.m. I swear.
• You can’t ban us from talking about it: Massachusetts did it last year. Now it’s New York City. These two states have decided to ban free formula samples and promotional materials from gift bags given to new mothers at hospitals post-partum.  See the resulting blogosphere explosion on the topic which resulted in some awesome bloggers landing on the television to discuss!
• Speaking of breast milk: Did you know that the TSA lifted its restriction on carry-on breast milk? Should make business travel a lot easier and checked luggage a lot drier.
• Don’t get mad, get, well, I don’t know: A new study shows that women who get angry at work are potentially seen as “out of control” as compared to men, who are “admired for it.”  Who me? No, I never lose my cool when I have to leave work early for an “emergency” at home.  I’m just a peach 24/7. And if you don’t think so, you can just shove it.

If only blogging was my job…

Tags: breast milk, working moms, career path, Japan