Suburban (in)Sanity

On girls and women and careers and balance and having it all

Many different factors keep pointing me to the need to write this. 72 (75, 77, whichever study you look at, it does't matter) cents on the dollar. Having it all. Girls in tech. Women's issues in this election season.

There are several matters I don't wish to touch with a ten foot pole, but the girls and women and careers and balance stuff - that I do. For whatever reason, I've spent a lot of time considering this lately, in large part due to a newsweek article I've been reading in snippets here and there.

But also through conversations with different mom friends, and different friend friends, some of whom aren't moms, some of whose life paths have taken them on different roads entirely. And yet for each of us there is this overarching question, this overarching narrative - How can you have it all? How can you be a woman and, you know, have it all? Family, career, marriage, all.

There is a very very simple answer to this very very complicated question. You can't.

Depressing? Well, I don't think so. I'll let my other friends pipe in with their answers, while I give my longer version.

So here's the thing. The one constant in life is CHANGE.

By the way, I swear there is relevance to a picture of food in a post about women and careers. I shall make it ALL clear.

I sit here in middle age at a certain place in my life, career, and time on this earth. There are certain realities to this era of my life. Choices I've made. I've fought for some of them. I've accepted others. At the moment, I am the primary at-home parent.

Earlier in our life together, before children while my husband was still finishing his graduate degrees, I was the primary wage-earner.

I could feel boxed in, limited by my role right now at home, but I don't. There's something actually quite freeing about it. We used to argue about things like getting the car's oil changed (who am I kidding? We still argue about stuff like that!) and it boils down to this: For me, the at-home parent, time horizons are long. For my husband, who lives the immediacy of the business world, the fast pace of a traveling lifestyle means things that need to get done must get done NOW. For me, things that need to get done will get done, eventually. It's a kind of life I think I was meant to live, at least some of my life, because it's led me to discover that I really notice the way things smell outside. That growing food makes me feel proud. The different kinds of birds that frequent our area. That I absolutely love to watch hawks soar. That there's a kind of meditation to be had in the everyday tasks of life.

This is a very strange post about career, isn't it?

My main advice to you, my younger friends who are in the process of seeking careers, defining yourselves, entering new life stages, or even just considering what to major in or which college to go to, is this - find something to be passionate about. For now. And then prepare for that to shift over time. Some of my passions have not shifted. See: Science Fiction. Some have evolved. Most don't make me any money, but I've never once regretted knowing how to cook. Never once regretted loving to read (or investing in the time to get a library card.) Or regretted knowing enough about music to be moved by a song, wanting to play it over and over and over on the iPod (somehow that sounds weirder than saying "the radio" but saying the radio doesn't make sense anymore because how would I make a song of my choosing play over and over on the radio unless I hooked my iPod into it? Tech these days…)

I think what I'm really saying here is to spend the time getting to know yourself so that you can make the compromises that are right for YOU based on what will make you feel the best, feel the most whole, the most complete.

You will know whether leaving your kids at daycare each day will rip your heart in two and leave you a weeping useless mess or whether being home with them will make your eyes bleed and cause you to become a weeping useless mess or whether both things will likely happen (this is entirely possible) and thus you need to choose the most economically feasible solution for your family for now, realizing you might change positions after 6 months, a year, two. (For us it was after 2 years. Surprised the shit out of both of us, lol.)

I wasn't at all passionate about parenting until I had kids, and not then until enough time had passed so that I could see things clearly. But my passion about family and home and creating space for *us* led me to parenting and opened me up to new interests.

Because when it all comes down to it, it's completely fine not to have it all right now, because I can be very satisfied with myself as a person because I feel confident in my passions. Mine are currently an eclectic mix of personal (parenting, gardening, birds, dogs, food) and business (tech, STEM, writing, books <- those last two cross over into personal again.) So while the career thread of my life, that era has the pause button pushed, I can make space for the passions, and find ways to try to express the other parts of me while still doing the drudgery, going through the motions, doing the everyday.

And living with the long view. That I don't have to have it all right now. Because later, I can get to it.

What about you? Have you compromised? Are you satisfied with your compromises? I don't think I was until very very recently. I guess that's why I want those yet to face these choices to know they're coming. Though would I have done things differently knowing that I would have to put aside dreams and goals? Perhaps not.

Just what do you *DO* all day?

I read this great q/a post by Carolyn Hax in the Washington Post today and almost got whiplash from nodding so vehemently. Even the most sensitive husband (again I remind you that I write from the point of view of the sometimes stay-at-home wife/mom, who also works sometimes, writes, volunteers, and does a thousand other things. This list is likely true/similar for at-home parents of both genders) has come home once in a while and asked - audibly or not - what did you do all day?

A small list of the kinds of things we at-home parents do (yes, yes, some working parents do these tasks too. Trust me, when I'm working I do all this PLUS work. But again, in the interests of the argument I'm making, just go with me on this):

• All food prep, including all food planning (this includes not just what to serve for dinner, but shopping in advance to be sure the materials are on hand)
• Junk mail handling/sorting
• Any sort of coupon clipping in the house (including finding the random useful coupons amidst the junkmail storm)
• Anticipating kids' needs/desires for food for packed lunches and meals
• Tidying up. Ad nauseum.
• Family photo management - including thoughtful christmas card selection, photos into frames, selecting and arranging payment for photos from school and sporting events)
• Family taxi - to and from sporting events, clubs, classes, school/bus stop)
• Family video management
• Some of pet care, generally along the planning and anticipating lines - planning for boarding for vacations, purchasing food, litter, beds, leashes, etc.
• Anticipating children's growth patterns and purchasing (on sale!) the right clothing in the right sizes for the right seasons.
• Buying new shoes every three months.
• Paying enough attention to notice the kids are outgrowing their shoes/socks/underwear/knowing that shoes/socks/underwear are on sale at XYZ store and pre-buying to not have to buy full-price at some point in the not-too-distant future. Damn kids keep growing.
• Family healthcare - dentist, orthodontist, annual physicals, sick visits, ob/gyn and personal health care including mamograms, colonoscopies, other "it sucks getting old" care
• Extended family healthcare - staying informed about aging parents or single siblings' health challenges, attending some doctors visits or coordinating care for some situations
• Pet healthcare - vet visits, maintaining vaccination schedules, administering medicines, exercise
• Reading material monitoring - staying in tune with what kids are reading, purchasing books needed, shuttling to library, approving selections
• Homework assistance, including the creation of whatever structure necessary to ensure homework actually can be completed - quiet zones, clean desks, writing implements available
• Monitoring of digital media consumption by the short folks, knowing what they're watching/playing, approving, limiting, dealing with the whining that comes from setting those limits
• School management - school library book remindings, school field trip forms, class parties, birthday celebrations (your own and others)
• Volunteering for one of the thousand things school/sports teams request - bringing juice boxes to practice or helping lead a small reading group, and many variations in between.
• Household maintenance and management - furnace and a/c care, lawn and garden scheduling, cable and phone, plumbing, exterminators, water services, waste haulers, handling any of the emergency services needed and keeping track of paperwork
• Household chores - dishes, laundry (including handwash items, knowing which things must air dry, separating colors), putting away laundry
• Child clothing management - migrating between cold weather wardrobe and warm weather wardrobe, and all accompanying accessories - boots, snowpants, coats (see aforementioned point on making sure to purchase, on sale!, these items for the next size for the next season) swim goggles.
• Seasonal management - making sure the household has non-toxic and non-expired sunscreen, bug spray, beach toys, towels, bags, snow shovels, gas for the snowblower.
• Holiday management - decorations, gift selection and purchase, wrapping, creating family plans that leave the fewest family members miffed
• Answering eleventy billion questions about life, the universe, and everything. Today I had to whip out BOTH f=m*a and the explanation for how many bits are in a byte, bytes in a kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terrabyte, etc. Thank god I paid attention in high school physics and college CS classes. Previous sessions include the branches of government and spirituality. I had a great role model, for the record. When I was about 12 my mom sat with me and taught me both binary and hexadecimal. Go geek moms!

So, what would you add to my list? And has your head exploded yet at the fact that not an item on there is focused on delivering to the at-home parent some level of intellectual stimulation? We have to source that into our activities - making a game out of knowing which store has which items on sale each week, meeting like-minded folks through the various volunteer and child activities, and finding flexible hobbies that can be set aside for months or years at a time (scrapbooking, writing, reading, photography, knitting for ex.)

Redefining who we are depending on what we're doing at the moment

One of the more unusual things about being an into/out of the workforce parent (sometimes called the "primary at home parent" and also the "Stay at Home Mom" but of course there's nothing particularly stay-at-homish about being the one who has the more flexible schedule, and of course it's not unique to moms, but let's just call it an into/out of the workforce parent for now) is the way we're constantly having to redefine ourselves. Refine our own personal message, our own "branding." And in the course of it, sometimes I think we lose track of important details.

Like, for instance, our extensive experience or advanced degree(s.)

I had something happen tonight that brought this to light. I have done some work at a client recently, which is also coincidentally where my husband works (not much coincidental about it, he passed my contact info along to someone in the org who needed the kind of tech consulting work I do - eLearning strategy, design and development.) They're doing a writeup, and in the course of it they're writing up my contribution to a recent project.

So, I know what my experience is. I know what I'm good at. I'm happy with my station in life. And yet I looked at this writeup and wondered who the heck that smart, awesome girl they were talking about was.

Oh. Me?

And it occurred to me that I'm so deep into the summer by now, the time with the kids, this godforsaken puppy (note to self: no more puppies!) the household priorities, that I've kind of put the "other" me on a backburner for the summer. I'm letting the writer me have second billing, right after the mommy me, but the eLearning strategist/designer? She's on summer hiatus. She's elsewhere in my brain.

And therein lies the rub, because in redefining myself for the summer, I almost lost a bit of me. And I think back to all the times in the kids' lives when I've had to refocus, change my way of thinking about myself or my approach with them when something isn't working for us (classic example: when at 3 months pregnant with our second I/we realized I. Just. Couldn't. Do. This. Anymore. And we started the thought process and transition toward me staying home with the kids for a while.) And I wonder what other parts of me have gone missing in there?

Do you ever feel like you've lost part of you while you're redefining yourself to meet your current needs and situation?

Broken

I'm working too much, and my daughter, the emotional antenna, knows. And it's not like at age seven she can say, "Mom, you're working so much and your head is elsewhere and that scares me and I wish you would focus on me more and I don't like having to go to school early some days or having you pick me up late other days and I just want our normal life back."

As if that were even possible.

But it's little things. She doesn't want to do the after school class anymore. Easily frustrated at home. Feels like everyone's "always" against her or making her do things or pulling her this way or that. She's emotionally peaking and valleying at varying times during the day, often one immediately after the next. Need I even say that it's never at a convenient time for me?

And on the inside, I'm so conflicted. For the first time since *before my oldest was born* (clock it - that was more than 9 years ago) I'm immersed in a work project that occupies my brain before, during, and after "work" (having a flexible schedule is both a blessing and an extremely bad curse.) My brain wants to solve my work issues 24/7 - yes even in the middle of the night. And my body is ready to give up on me. Woke up with a migraine this morning, which is my body's last salvo, last fire across the bow. "Yo, bitch. More rest. Less crazy."

And my little girl, how do I fix this? How do I help her know that changes are okay? That everything is temporary anyway (while simultaneously not freaking out about the fact that summer is 5 short weeks away and my project is due June 1. If it slips even a few days, I'm toast with no childcare.)? That mom working isn't stealing me away from her. Because in a way, that's a lie. It's true, my brain is tied up elsewhere much of the time. But is that really wrong? She's seven! She can cope. Can't she? Should she?

Why are all issues of working and balancing mothering such Solomon's choices? Why can't I figure out how to compartmentalize? Or the right things to say to my baby, who isn't actually saying, "I don't like it when you work"? (most of the time. She has actually said that. Rip my beating heart out and serve it on a platter, shall we?)

And am I upset because she's shining her white-hot light on the exact heart of the issue? The place where a big part of me *wants* this. Wants the full immersion. Misses the way solving work-related problems feeds a very malnourished part of my soul.

I never realized that having babies would cause this kind of existential discomfort. I don't want to have to face up to the reality that is cut back - do less - pull back. I want the damn cake, I want to eat it, too. But it turns out, I have to share.

 

Things that make my head burst into flames

I've been working in my chosen career since I was nineteen years old. I started as a part-time college intern. Three, four, five days a week I would drop my books and notebooks off in my dorm room, change into something that vaguely resembled business attire (back in the days when women did *not* wear pantsuits. And I'm not even making that up. I remember when the first woman in the area started wearing pantsuits to work - not pants/tops as separates, but like a men's business suit but cut for a woman. No, it wasn't the 1980s. It was the 1990s for chrissake! Oh, right, I'm old. Erp.) and hop the train into the city to go to work. There were days when I had to make sure to work at least two hours, because if I only worked one, I didn't quite make the train fare to/from work (at my starting rate of about $6.37/hr.)

I've worked more years than I haven't. And I took time off to raise my kids. Because it's something that was important to me, but it was also something that was the right timing for us - my career had reached a lull, I had lost one job and a new job wasn't quite the right fit for me, so we reconsidered priorities, wrote a budget, and...I've blogged about this before.

But the thing that has always made my head burst into flames is the fact that I work hard, damn hard, and just as hard as anybody else (harder than some, too.) And I'm quick. And productive. And my time is worth it. This is even more important in the post-baby-working-years because I have these heart-stoppingly painful conversations with my 7 year old, who tonight at bedtime when I was reviewing the week's schedule and mentioning when I would be in the office, told me "we're not going to have to have a babysitter again?" Because last week once I had to have a sitter take care of the kids after school for a few hours so I could do a video shoot at work. And she noticed. And while the sitter does a nice job, and the daughter benefits from other people in the world caring about her and interacting with her, she just doesn't like it. So rip my heart out and serve it on a platter, shall we? Ugh. This part about working is not the best part, but I console myself with the idea that I'm working and contributing and setting a good example, and I've got a pretty great part-time gig that flexes around my family's commitments and lets me be the mom most of the time and...then I read this sort of shit and it makes my head burst into flames. (that article references this one which is where the actual combustion occurs)

Because HOW CAN IT BE 2011 and this is still happening?!?!?

And how can a writer write this passage and not have her own head explode into flames?

Simply put, many women—not all, but enough to have a big impact on the statistics—are willing to trade higher pay for other desirable job characteristics.

Because I just don't get it.

Meanwhile, the original poster (the one who I agree with) says the following:

I would also love to know why, if pay is so equal, women with kids are paid less than men with kids. I'm sure that some will explain it by saying that women decided to take time off to raise up the young'ins, and therefore lose market share. I can see how that would affect lifetime earnings. However, I am confused as to why, then, a woman who is employed at a job with the same experience as a man still earns less than he does.

Exactly!

I heard this from a company I worked with when first returning to the my field after a 5 year gap to raise my babies. "Oh, the industry has changed, technology is different, therefore we'll pay you this lower rate because honestly you're 5 years behind but aren't you lucky to get to work with us?"

I went on to do development on a project when I was only assigned to do design (tech friends will know these pay at VERY different pay scales - and my background is tracked more toward design, though I'm learning now how to spin things so that this isn't as much of a factor) and discovered that while I was off for 5 years, what the industry did was build authoring tools to automate much of what we used to have to code by hand. The industry just basically caught up with me, and gave me additional tools to work with. I wasn't behind in the slightest. I still get mad thinking about this experience. Bah!

As my friend Veronica (a nuclear engineer from Argentina, and someone else who has chosen to do the kind of sequencing I've done, taking time off to raise children, planning to come back again to the workforce in the future) says, "Infuriating. It is a double discrimination: one that considers that the work of raising a child (a human being!!!) is useless and another one that sentences a woman to a lower wage because she was "wasting her time" while everybody else was doing more productive things. It makes me furious. I think that before this pay discrimination disappears, society must recognize - and include in the economy - child rearing work. Until these activities are not seen for what they are (an indispensable contribution to the development of the human race) we will be punished for raising our kids."

Is that what it is? A punishment? Why aren't we all marching on our various government offices *now*? Oh, that's right, because there are school lunches to make, diapers to change, babies to nurse, field trips to chaperone, teenagers to equip with the skills to survive their adolescence. And work to be done.

Quantities of Quality Time

Hmm, I wrote this on Wednesday but then didn't post it. My sloth extended to my online time, too, apparently.

I find myself reminded again about this maxim (Quantities of Quality Time), which I first heard at a La Leche League meeting ages and ages ago. It's often one of the underpinnings of one's decision to stay home with the kids for some period of time, or at least I found that it helped me feel comfortable with my own decision to do so. Even on the days when I swore my brain was melting from lack of use. (I'm sure you're as relieved as me to find out that it didn't, even though there were some touchy moments back then.)

But beyond just that decision, which - by the way - I've noticed more of my mom friends making over and over again - viewing the workforce as something they can dip into and out of over their children's younger years. I am thrilled about this development. I have done this, too, doing project work at times that suits my family's schedule, and either turning down or not pursuing work during times when it's difficult (e.g.., summer holidays or busy times of year.)

I can count many friends right now who are either working again or have recently stopped working, again (having been home with the kids at some point since having them.) Isn't that interesting? One just decided to refrain from taking any more project work until the fall when the youngest is in school full-time, another just picked up some freelance work after pre-school started, a third was back in the workforce for a bit but quit when job pressures began to outweigh family ones and she (and her husband) felt the balance wasn't right for them. 

I recognize I'm lucky to live in an era and socio-economic environment where any of us have these choices, but at the same time I also embrace the fact that this is the feminist legacy - that has given my generation of mothers and the one directly behind me some freedom to choose. While I know some of my peers really don't have a choice and must work, I think we are in an era where there are more options for us, more choices, and for that I am grateful.  

But back to my original point - the quantities of quality time...today is nothing special. I was in the office today, which makes for a long day for me, but I was able to get the kids by the time school let out rather than using after-school care. And we came home and have done some hanging out. The eldest is currently in the comfiest chair in the house (in another room), reading. The youngest is up in my bedroom watching TV. I am snuggled into the couch with the dog, who misses me on my office days. ;) And my kids are here, and we're home, and the world is in balance.

Even though the house is a bit...untidy (I'm being over-generous with that statement, but let it slide, folks, let it slide...) I have some of that awesome 5 mins a day bread resting on the counter and the oven on. We're going to eat soon, and then snuggle in further with the dog to watch American Idol. And maybe some video-game time. And I realize that there are a thousand educational things I could do with my kids, and a thousand ways I could make this time more memorable - we could do a project together, play a game, or have them help me cook. But I am satisfied in my sloth, because they have a LOT of me. And we're together. And that's what's important to me, and to them, right now at this stage in our lives.

The fact that I have quantities of quality time with them means that I don t have to put pressure on myself or them to always bring my "A" game - and it means they're pretty darn accepting of me and my limitations. When I do have a hissy fit about something minor and later apologize, they are so gracious to me. We show each other that we're human in those small ways. And today, we can just snuggle on the couch and be together, and that is enough. That is plenty. And we are lucky.

Some things that have caught my attention

In a week full of editing (I'm editing a middle-grade sci-fi novel I wrote in 2009 with the hopes of independently publishing it in the near future), tooth loss (another one for the 9 year old, he says it's 11 down. I lost count at about 6) and an actual honest-to-goodness warmup (temps topped 40 two days in a row. Melt, snow, melt!) I've read another great bunch of articles. A quick recap of some of the best:

• Through My Eye, Not Hipstamatics is a great rebuttal to an uproar that occurred when a photo shot with an iPhone app won third place in major photography contest. This is one of those articles that is really interesting for the way it highlights the fact that technology is changing *everything* - including the way we produce and perceive art.
• I loved this article that talked about the Groupon Superbowl ad. I thought the ad was thought-provoking, but as soon as it finished I turned to my husband and said, "Wow. That's going to piss a lot of people off." I think this coverage helps explain the hipocricy behind the uproar. Interesting.
• I liked this BlogHer post about whether friendship comes with expiration dates, but what I really wonder is how has Facebook subverted what is probably a natural fact (the natural "growing apart" that many friendships go through as one enters and leaves various life stages.)
• This article about a mayor of Bogota, Colombia and his unorthodox ways of solving societal problems was fascinating. 
• But the article that hit me the most profoundly was this Newsweek article by Lisa Miller (who is quickly becoming my favorite news writer) about the complexities of mothering and working and just getting things done in today's chaotic and "self-service" environment makes us all just a wee bit more crazy. Oh my gosh she captured all of my pain in passages like: "Health-insurance forms, 401(k) planning, personal banking, tech support, expenses, gift returns—these have become existentially excruciating, a maze of portals and passwords." and this quote from another mother: "I have thousands of little ants crawling up my legs. I have thousands of things to check into and to manage."

Ahh...here's to hoping your week isn't full of thousands of ants crawling up your legs. I know mine is.

On being busy, in all its flavors and colors

One word to encapsulate 2010, that's what today's Reverb prompt is.

And all I can think of is busy. Busy busy busy.

My friends with kids older than me warned me this day would come, but I never quite understood them. Maybe it was their "Oh, you think you're busy NOW" delivery, or my own naivete? Or perhaps just a belief that I am the master of my domain, the captain of my own soul, and thus I can choose to be as busy or as not-busy as I like.

Ha ha ha. Oh that's nice. I've blogged about activities for kids before - how much IS too much? And I still don't know the answer, even many months and several different activities later. And it's a question that I can't seem to answer for the kids OR myself, that's the sticky wicket.

It's not just the mom taxi that keeps me busy (though between dance, gymnastics 2x/week plus monthly meets, baseball 3x/week, softball 3x/week, short-lived basketball 2x/week, various art classes, band, theater camp, regular summer camp, swim lessons, piano lessons, and all of the associated running-around that those activities create the need for, like baseball cleats and dance photos, and clarinets, I do find that the car's mileage continues to creep up.)

But I do all these other things, too. It's a constant balancing act, trying to prioritize and decide which things bring me the most enjoyment, where I feel my talents are best used, what things fill me up instead of just depleting me.

I'm getting better at this, but am still just busy. I plan all the family vacations/travel (there was a lot this year - Florida in March/April, D.C. in July, Wisconsin in August, my trip to OR for a writing workshop in October, New York and Kansas City in November) and am chief in charge of all food purchasing and prep in our house. We got a dog in January, and until recently had a very sick cat with complicated medical needs at home (instead now we have a 4 month old kitten who thinks licking knuckles while I type is FUN, and the cursor is some elaborate and very entertaining game designed just for her.) While I have a litter box man, pet food and daily care is mostly on me.

I'm a very active volunteer breastfeeding counselor, putting in 2-5 hours/week in my work there. I helped run the school's auction again this year, though unofficially which is one of those things I do well - being unofficially officially involved, lol. In the crunch time it was up to 20 or 30 hrs/week (plus plus), but for much of the early part of the year it was 5-10.

The garden doesn't plant itself, though I do mostly ignore it once it's planted. We've had a number of rather aggravating household systems failures this year (the water/well drama is still going on!), which require someone to be home and in regular communication with some service provider of some sort. Me. 

I'm a co-president of the Parent Association board at the kids' school this year, which is much more work than I expected (though not terribly hard work, but work that takes time.) And I volunteer in other ways at school as much as I can, and in ways I think are most helpful like attending Open Houses as an experienced parent to answer questions, or helping with the Book Fair because I'm such a big book geek. I think my tally of books read this year is up past 50 (counting the audio books the kids and I listen to in the car - something's got to take the edge off all that dull suburban driving! Listening to Septimus Heap or The Prydain Chronicles definitely takes the edge waaay off.)

And somewhere in there I managed to write another novel (a piece of crapola one yet, but I have faith in my ability to whip it into shape now that the bones are down,) edit and polish another, attend a workshop for and submit that polished one out to the great wide world of publishing, e-publish a short story, and write countless blog posts and little bits of ideas on scraps of paper and corners of notebooks and around the margins of work-related notes.

Oh, yeah, and I picked up another project, actual paying work that is occasionally difficult to shoehorn in among the other things that occupy my time (though work naturally gets highest priority given that people actually PAY me to do those things, whereas every other thing on my list is currently unpaid.)

So do I feel justified in being busy? I think writing it out helps me give shape to the busy, makes me feel like it's not just a smoke screen. Because I have often encountered people in my life who I think use "busy" as an excuse to avoid things, not have deep relationships, not develop their own interests, because they're just so "busy."

But then again, who am I to judge? Someone else might look at this list and wonder why I don't work more hours, why I haven't cleaned off my desk in a hundred thousand years, why is the basement is still stacked with paperwork and crud from our move 7 years ago, or why my children sometimes wear stained clothes.

The answer here isn't more Busy. It's the People Before Things answer that I love so so much. Yeah, we might be busy, but I can tell you all the books my kids have read in the last year, the names of all of their classmates (cheating a little, they attend a small school,) what brand of peanut butter is preferred, and how much washing is necessary before child A can interact with friend B who has a deathly allergy to peanut butter.

But I can also talk plot details and characterization in all of my active works-in-progress. I can speak intelligently about the latest research in breastfeeding, the current trends in the e-publishing business, the state of eLearning authoring tools, and the impact new technologies like the iPad are having on the world. Being a sane person with interests outside my children's (as much as I love them and cherish them) has been one of my goals of mothering, and I feel I have accomplished that goal well. However, in the process, I've become, well, rather Busy.

Next year, my goal is to look back on this prompt and write my 2011 word. For next year, I plan to aim for Balanced.

On email accounts and backing up and general digital hygeine

Found myself writing a long post on a yahoo group about why and what I do to secure my email inbox against catastrophic loss, and thought it was worth boring to tears sharing with my blog readers. So what do you do? What's your solution or insurance policy for your email?

Note: This is going into my Tales from my Science Fiction Life file because honestly, email is something that came into being during my adulthood. When I was in college, no email. Grad school, we used IRC (Internet Relay Chat) and sometimes we found information on newsgroups. Post-grad my first work email was a ccmail [1] account. One of my email addresses has the number 99 in it because that's the year I created the account. So, it's been only a bit more than 10 years, really, since this stuff has mattered, and today it matters a great deal. But enough about history, back to our regularly scheduled lecture information session about email and backups.

For email, I've switched over to gmail for my primary email storage, although that is putting my eggs in *their* basket, it's a pretty reliable one (they have multiple redundancies and things like bomb-proof bunkers, I trust them, your mileage may vary.)

I use email accounts that run the IMAP protocol, which who the heck knows what it stands for, but means that the server and the email clients sync with one another. Contrasted with POP and/or POP3 (which tries to do something similar but does not.) Main point - there are copies of all messages on the server, until you manually delete them from one of your readers (sometimes there's another copy, if it was synced down from the server before you deleted it and you haven't synced back up to the server again yet, but this is temporary and somewhat rare unless you're a freak like me...)

I use Thunderbird as my email client (mozilla free download - same people that bring you Firefox browser.) I have it running on my iMac and my macbook. I also then have my iPhone hooked up to my email accounts (yes, there are multiple email accounts, and yes, there are a lot of computers/tech in my house. Geek, remember? I prioritize tech over almost every other household purchase! Some days the cats don't eat because mamma needs some new tech. Just kidding. Meow.)

When I check mail on my phone while out and about, it fetches me the latest from the server, which may mean 5 new messages, as well as 8 or 10 deletions from when I was at my desktop earlier in the day. Very convenient for checking mail from many places. I can check on a computer at the library using gmail.com via a web browser, and again those changes will be fetched down to my other computers next time I log in on them.

Can't beat the convenience, and because it's all server-side it means I can't really lose that email inbox. A local copy is stored on each of the other machines (the phone carries only the last 50, though you can dig back into your inbox deeper by fetching more messages manually) so there's a quasi-backup there, plus the server copy.

Again, all my eggs are in gmail's basket, but it's giving me the convenience of what I need. I even run one of my other email accounts through a shell gmail account because I prefer gmail's way of handling messages and I was having a spoof problem with that account. The only hitch is that the first time you download the mailbox to a new machine, at least in my case because I'm a digital packrat, it takes a while (I have 5k messages in my inbox. I delete a lot, but get a LOT!)

I predict this kind of mobile connectivity will be standard in the future, in fact I'm waiting for my invitation to download a copy of RockMelt, a new browser that's more tuned into the social web because I think they're starting to head that way - basically more awareness of the constantly moving user, one who uses multiple types of devices all day and needs access to their core "stuff" be it email, files, images, movies, music library, digital books, friends, contacts, etc. Stay tuned for ... more tales from my science fiction life!

 

[1] If you actually follow all the links from this note to the wikipedia articles, you can get a nifty little primer in Ancient Internet Tech, aka "You kids get off my lawn!" stuff. Lovely. When, exactly, did I get so old??

 

In Awe of Working Moms

I am once again in awe of my working mom friends.Not that I don’t count myself among the “working moms” these days, but the on-again/off-again nature of my kind of work (technology and specifically eLearning consulting) means I’ve come and gone from the workforce on a number of occasions. I’ve recently come back to the working fold with a new and important-to-not-screw-up project.

Holy crap. The house has clearly been hit by a cyclone. The well pump may have just gone out. I had to make three runs to the vet and pet food stores because I first couldn’t get the fancy and expensive prescription diet food for the ailing cat, then bought dog food. For the ailing cat. The driveway ain’t gonna seal itself (though, to be fair, I ain’t gonna be sealing the driveway, but I am the key to getting the driveway sealed.) [1]

But honestly, my hat (and pumps) are off to my working mom friends. I honestly have no idea how any of us do any of it. I suppose for some, the house just isn’t getting lived in enough to look as disastrous as mine does today. I think my children are particularly efficient at inflicting maximum mess in minimal time intervals. There should be a children’s messy Olympics or something, they’d both be medalists.

But more than just the mess, is the general feeling that I’m not getting enough done...for anyone. For myself, for my kids, for my work, for the house, for the guy I share the house with.

Yes, yes, I know I don’t live in a 1950s fantasy world. Trust me, I have semi-reasonable expectations. Anyone who has ever been to my house can attest to the fact that I have no compunctions about being a house that obviously has children living in it. [3] But yet I’m haunted by the idea that while working I’m not doing anything at 100%, which is of course ridiculous because I’m totally an 80% girl.

Does the mere act of working, doing work that someone else pays me for, equate to a layer of pressure over everything? Why on earth? It strikes me as crazy, but I’m having trouble shaking the feeling. Perhaps I need a few more months back at work under my belt before I can properly analyze this. Tell me, working moms (or on-again/off-again ones like me) – is this normal? Am I losing what little shred of sanity I thought I had left?

[1]What does it say about me that the things that are most on my mind are all money-related things? Perhaps it’s good that I’m working and bringing in a paycheck again. [2]

[2] Though, funny story about my first paycheck for this project. My husband brought it home. Going to have to have a talk with someone at work...

[3] Tangent: I never did understand what compels some people to live as though there are no children in the house – have all that “kid stuff” hidden upstairs or in a basement. We had kids not just because it was that time in our relationship, or to carry on our names...but because we wanted some company on this journey through life. In all its messy, untidy, if-I-have-to-tell-you-one-more-time-to-put-your-dirty-socks-in-the-laundry-room-I-might-scream loving glory.