Oh! By The Way...

I'm going back to work part time.

Yep, as of Monday next week, I'll be leaving the house mid-mornings 3 days a week for a half-day gig at an office job.

This has been kind of spur of the moment and is perhaps a little bit off the track I was on, but is necessary at this point if I am ever to have a hope of succeeding at the projects I've recently undertaken, especially since it's such a battle to find the time I need to put in to move things along.

At the moment, it's very slow going, since having all of the kids home during the day and having to do school with the older two in the mornings takes a large chunk out of my production time in a day, not to mention my sanity! Simply put, it's just a bit more than I can handle and I desperately need to get out of the house and spend some time in adult company for a change as well.

Getting out of the house for a few hours a couple of days per week while earning some predictable income means that I can count on a certain amount of guaranteed income per month, which will go toward deposits for getting the kids back into their old school next year. This will allow me to spend more time getting stuck into production and letting the world know what I've got to offer! It also means that I should be able to pick up a few more printing supplies in the meantime, which will allow me to do a bit more than I've been able to do up until this point.

The whole thing sort of came about as a result of a discussion #hubbyparkins and I were having a month or two back regarding a few things that he needed to get sorted out at work in order to make it possible for him to earn better. I offered to help him part time with his admin if it would mean more income for him. Then, last week, he asked me if I would still be willing to help him out, to which I obviously said that I would. He then mentioned it back at the office and I've been asked to come in on a part-time, temporary contract to do some sales for the company.

This will free him up to do some actual delivery and project management instead of having to focus on getting the jobs on the board first, which means higher overall production for the company and therefore higher income. Which means less stress for me in terms of having to make money out of my new business/es *right now*. Which means peace and harmony all 'round.

Things were starting to get a bit hairy there for a little while. It took losing a fake baby for me to realise that I was taking on more than I could cope with and then beating myself up for it when the inevitable exhaustion set in and I couldn't keep up anymore.

This way, things are broken down into smaller, more manageable targets for me. First things first - making the income to get the kids back into school next year (and giving myself some time away from them so that I don't turn Paula Yates on anyone's ass). Then I get to focus my attention more intensively on the printing and other projects. Granted, it means taking a bit longer to get my own show on the road. But considering that I'm still exclusively breastfeeding an infant, have a toddler about to turn 2 and have been homeschooling two older kids in different grades, on top of running a household of 6 people on a shoestring and trying to get two businesses off the ground, I think it's fair to say that cutting down the gradient and pacing myself a little is not tantamount to admitting defeat but rather pure common sense.

(Excuse me for a minute while I run to the bathroom and chant that last bit to myself in the mirror.)

And there you have it. After all my ranting over the years about the rat race and how I hated working for a boss, I'm selling out and going back for a while.

Rest assured that this does NOT mean you won't be seeing any progress on my printing and other projects! Keep watching this space, folks. Fortunately, #babyparkins is getting the hang of this teething thing now and has gone back to more or less sleeping through at night. This helps a LOT and I'm slowly working on setting up a bit of a web presence for the printing and copywriting businesses, getting acquainted with Wordpress in whatever spare time I can scrounge, and hopefully I'll have something to show for these efforts very soon!

In the meantime, the inspiration keeps flowing and I'm being slapped in the head with new ideas all the time! I can't wait to get a few of these out there and I'm *this close* to doing just that, so don't go anywhere!