Clear Epic

What a week this has been, oh wait. It’s only Tuesday. That has to tell you something. Miss P is teething again and has been up a lot. Thankfully she gets naps at school/daycare, too bad I can’t. I wonder sometimes if productivity in the corporate world would rise if there were some kind of nap time scheduled in our day. Nap time or maybe an hour to go to the gym, or something to get us away from the office and resting. You would think that lunch is for that, but not so much. My lunch is usually 20 minutes at my desk while I’m working through one thing or another. If I am able to get more time I go see my baby who just happens to be a one minute (yes, one) drive away. When it is nice a 5 minute walk away (can you tell I’m loving this?).

Work has been stressful. I cannot even count up the millions of dollars in sales I lost last week. Millions. That is a bad week. I haven’t fully checked the damage yet and probably won’t. I don’t want to think of what income I lost for my family. You may be thinking “Tiff, that is sales. You win some, you lose some.” Here’s the thing, I’m not trying to be cocky, but my partner and I have a system. When we stick to our formula we usually don’t lose a whole lot, so I’m not sure what is going on but we’ve got to fix this. I hate losing. I hate losing more now because I know how it affects my family. That is what we live off of. I HAVE to do well at my job. It is not an option for me. If I don’t then its bad news. Not bad as in we can’t eat. We’ll never let it get to that, but when you think about the quest to pay off debt, build up our savings, put money away for retirement, fix up our sad little townhouse so that we can eventually resell this thing… it adds up. And those are just the additional optional “nice to have” goals that we can sometimes put the extra we have toward.

This year it is even harder. I am still struggling with being a work outside the home Mama. I’ll be honest. It is a good thing that I love my job, I love the company and I love the people I work with. When you invest so much time into a job, more time than you get to spend with your kids, then you had better like it and/or be good at it in my opinion. So when I look at how much time has passed without the success that I need, it is rough. I feel as though I am failing at both work and family. Both things that make me thrive. Reality, I know is that I am doing fine at both. But when you are already feeling down and missing your baby because the two hours you get to spend a day with her whizzes by, and you look at the numbers of how much potential revenue you just lost your company… well, let’s just say that those two factors do not add up to positive self-esteem.

One thing I will say about the company I work for, they are awesome. I am blessed. I mentioned we moved Prayse to a new daycare. It is amazing and we love it. It is also a learning center, and hence more expensive. We can only afford four days a week. Thank goodness we can only afford four days a week. Know why? Wait for it… because I get to work from home on Fridays!!! Granted I am working longer and busting my butt to get more accomplished while I am in the office but how incredible is that?? My company fully supports this and the conversations tend to be “Let’s find a solution so that you are happy and engaged, because we know if you aren’t then you won’t be working here long and we don’t want that.”

I start this week and I am SO excited. I am just waiting for Friday where I get to see my baby one more day a week. I can’t even explain how happy that makes me. One more reason to strive to be successful at my job, so that I build up enough trust to work through solutions like this one with my managers.

So although this thread is random complaining, this is one thing I am not complaining about. This is an answer to prayer and hopefully will help me be a better mama, wife, and colleague. I hope this is what I need to feel more comfortable and just… alive.