You need more structure

I have goals. And I'm in a place where I have to work quickly, because time goes by so fast when you're a mom. You wake up and it's Friday and what do you have to show for your week? I try not to be too hard on myself. In one twenty minute segment of time I changed a diaper, soothed a cranky little girl with a Tivo'd episode of Mr. Rogers, roasted sausage, chopped vegetables, sold diaper covers on Craig's List ($60), picked up clutter and started diaper laundry. And then,when that was done, went out for cocktails with girlfriends!

Yay me!

But what's not getting done is: the bookkeeping, following up on new freelancers, pestering my clients until they get back to me with direction, following up with the client who deserves my attention, research for a project I really want to close.

And all of this isn't happening because I don't have enough child-free time. I'm very lucky that I have wonderful options. The holdup is I don't want to put my older daughter in more care. After two years and a half years of barely ever seeing her I still need as much catch-up time as I can get. I just miss her so much when we're not together.

I consulted my business coach, R. Her advice: get your structure down. Get your vendors lined up, get more childcare. It was a revelation to focus on this new structure for a smaller way of doing business. But a few hours later I laughed at myself because I already knew all this. When I started this company, structure and systems were the things I focused on first. Though this was in the middle of the dot-bomb downturn I had lots of time to implement structure--there was very little actual work! Now structure is mandatory because I'm busy and getting busier.

Now my daughter will be in preschool three extra hours one day a week. For a month. As a trial (of my guilt). The baby will stay with me (no taking of the bottle for her, she says!) for now. The next step is getting someone to come in to play with her when she gets old enough. This is costing us money so I better quickly decide if this new way of working, and these brand new projects I'm starting to build, are really what I want to do.

(In my heart, I know it is. But this heart sometimes doesn't know who its beating is for: my girls or me.)

In other getting-your-shit-together-news, I hired an organizing consultant to help me figure out how to best make my dining room function as my office and still be my dining room. See, we want to live European, a.k.a. making due with small space. She's also helping me with the finishing touches on our kitchen. This amazing woman came in and told me what I needed and will now go and buy me organizing things and come back and set them up for me!

I LOVE her! I especially love her because she says I'm mostly organized and just need some purging, some editing, some consolidation and some organizing stuff. Made me feel like I actually have a handle on all of this!

starting over with a meme

When I left off, almost a year ago, I was ending something and starting anew. And it's all new. I'm doing exactly what I set out to do: working from home, being a mom, still doing the work I love. Still working with L, though we're each exploring other creative sides in order to bring freshness to our work.

I have new people in my life that I know love me (and aren't afraid to tell me everything). People that make me think about myself in new ways. I've broadened my identity, if only just a little (though at times I wonder if the opposite isn't true, but I refuse to become the cliche mom who doesn't know who she is). I'm getting back in touch with my sense of generosity, compassion, groundedness.

Are things perfect? Of course not. My God, did anyone ever tell you just how physical all-day parenting is? Not just the nursing and the fatigue. When you're with your child all day picking her up, putting her down, chasing her, holding her, getting whacked in the face with her smelly feet, you realize you've only used your brain for 15 years and let the rest go to pot. But I'm loving the texture of this life, the way it wears out my body and my mind and forces me to confront all that I believe about myself. Every day.

That last post is dated 9/28/05. I said I'd decided I wanted to try for another baby in March. I didn't know it then, but I was already pregnant. I should have known. I had signs, included my child outright telling me I had a baby in my tummy. Our second baby girl was born in a beautiful waterbirth at the end of May.

And there's so much more to tell, but that will come in pieces. Right now, for once, I'm focusing on the here and now.

And with that, a meme courtesy of CityMama.

Five Things In My Freezer
1. Trader Joe's Beef Tamales
2. 4 boxes of buckwheat frozen waffles.
3. 3 boxes of flax frozen waffles, which have a box that looks maddenly like the buckwheat kind.
4. A bottle of Skyy Vodka.
5. 2 oz. of breast milk.

Five Things In My Closet
1. Bags of maternity clothes that I need to give back to friends.
2. My cheap Dockers cropped pants and random label shirts that I only bought because I'm postpartum and I really really hope I won't need them next summer
3. My wedding veil, in a hat box
4. Yarn I need to sell on Craig's List because we all know I will never, never crochet anything
5. A bathtub spa mat thingy that I've used exactly once even though I loved loved loved it. Must do that again soon.

Five Things In My Car
1. This clock that I need to take back to New Seasons because it doesn't keep time. Hope they have another in orange because it goes perfectly with our new kitchen.
2. Random plastic toys that Clara's nanny buys for her that she's already forgotten about
3. Two car seats. Yes, two. Still getting used to that.
4. Jumper cables
5. Trail mix

Five Things In My Diaper Bag (Purse)
1. Extra cloth diapers and covers
2. Rice bar wrappers
3. Cell phone
4. Lipgloss
5. Notes from Iris's birth that my midwives copied for me today in our last appointment. *sniff*

Five Books On My Nightstand [so glad I'm not the only one that has too many books on my nightstand]
1. Mothers Who Think
2. WonderTime Excellent mag
3. Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn by Peggy Simkin. MUST HAVE for all pregnant mamas.
4. Last month's O Magazine. First one I'd ever read--it's much better than I thought it would be.
5. Living Without

Lucid transition

When I first took over the design agency from my husband I had a lot of people ask me what my ultimate goals were, what I wanted to do with the company. At the time, their questions totally baffled me. What do you mean, do I want to build wealth? Sell the company? Who would buy us? I just want to do the work I love to do and not have to answer to a lunatic boss!When I got pregnant my goal was to grow the company, but mainly so I could distribute some of my responsibilities and take some time off. When I came back, and our sales pipeline was dead (mainly because of a poor hiring decision on my part), I had to quickly jump back in and rebuild what had been left to languish. I did it, and had the company back up and profitable within the year.

A month ago I put a date to start trying for another baby: next March. And I started looking at what I would have to do, who I would have to hire, what kind of projects we need to make that financially feasible. And I started to look at what would fulfill me personally and professionally. Nothing was adding up. Some scenarios looked too much like 2003, when I had C, and I didn't want to repeat that. The issue of who would do sales remained. And then I had to examine the issue of who I could depend on to take my responsibilities and who could be responsible for themselves. It was all looking like a tremendous amount of work on my part. If I've learned anything in this journey it's that one of the riskiest moves you can make is put too much responsibility in one person. If that person leaves, you're in a world of hurt.

The good news is our bank account is quite full right now and expenses are very low. And I started to consider this: My partner L and I could could take cash out of the company, keep some freelance clients, work from home, and likely make just as much money, if not more. Still no boss. Doing the work I love with the opportunity to do it with people I love to work with.

And then it became the only option I was willing to consider. I'm completely redesigning the business I've been running for the last four years.

I'm totally at peace with it and haven't had a moment of concern if this is the right thing to do. My friends and family are ecstatic and so supportive. Not everyone will be happy, of course, and some will think I'm giving up, but I'm totally unconcerned. I'm taking good care of the people I need to take care of, namely myself and my family and my employees.

There's more to tell, of course. I've already filled up my future with several new possibilities. The exciting part is seeing which ones comes to fruition....

Everyday, everwhere babies are mixed with business

Yesterday I hosted a baby shower for one of my clients, a woman with whom I've walked both sides of the line between friendship and client/vendor relationship. I'm not always 100% comfortable with it, not because I don't adore her (I absolutely do) but because there are the inevitable awkward times when she can't tell me something because it's not appropriate for a vendor to know that, but at the same time she'd like my support as a friend. Whatever the issue, I let her take the lead and it seems to work, three years into it.

The shower was held at my client's house, since mine is a construction zone (still! still!) and she has air conditioning. Two of the other guests were pregnant with their first babies, as is my client. Two of the other guests were my client's mother and the mother of one of our friends, a women I'm guessing is in her late 60s. That left me the only woman present who is still in the chaotic throws of motherhood. There were all sorts of mothering experiences that I don't even think about any more that they had never considered. Such as:

1. Unbutton your shirt from the bottom up when you're breastfeeding in public. Also, you can't wear long dresses when you're breastfeeding. Only separates.
2. When you breastfeed a newborn, you do it every 2 hours. And that feeding can last anywhere from 15 - 45 minutes. That 6 hour car trip is going to be a lot longer than what you're used to.

And then there was the one that I kept to myself, that I'll bring up when I don't sound so self-righteous:

3. The Boppy sucks. Seriously. It never stays in place and it puts a lot of strain on your back and wrists. Take it back. Get a My Breast Friend. And it should never be used to prop up a baby that can’t sit on its own, like in the picture on the package. I’ve seen several babies fall over an conk their heads that way.

Blogger at a big chunk of the rest of this entry so I’m going to have to come back to it later. I have found a woman who may be a candidate for my panel of amazingly smart women who are going to give me great ideas. (Need to get a catchier name for this panel!) She’s quite young, and still doesn’t realize that for the rest of her life she will likely work with people who aren’t as smart or passionate as she is, but she wants to help businesses succeed and she wants to go out on her own.

And a very last note: I bought this book today: How To Organize Just About Everything by Peter Walsh. This author is on the reality TLC show Clean Sweep, one of my guilty pleasures. But he's also a former CEO, studied educational psychology, and isn't afraid to tell people what they need to hear. This book tells you how to plan and organize hundreds of things, and each topic is handled in about one page with no more than 10 or 15 bullet points. Perfect for me! I don't have TIME to read a whole book about much of anything.

Right there in front of me

We had an interesting pitch experience this week. We received an RFQ from a non-profit we're interested in working with. It didn't actually require a response beyond coming in for a meeting, it was more of a program brief, which was unusual but I asked about this and they confirmed. It was a good meeting, we made some recommendations to restructure the project that would get them more value for their money, and they seemed to appreciate them. We found out today we didn't get it, and they went with a guy who did a full analysis of their site (something we usually charge for) and they liked him because he went the extra mile. Which is how it should be. I seriously have no hard feelings.

Except. Except that it makes me realize that we're not the hungry, young firm that we used to be. (I've known this before, but I think I forgot during the dry months of quarter one!) Three years ago we were the firm that prepared elaborate presentations, did all sorts of free analysis and design, and poured our hearts into every proposal. We still do that for the really big important jobs, but our business model dictates that we fill in the gaps with the smaller projects, so these are important, too.

This was just another reminder that we really need to hire. I really want to fill in our staff with the creative situations like we have with our analytics expert and we used to have with our usability expert (before she had her baby), but those situations are once in a blue moon and I have to move forward. I'm not satisfied with the contractor we're using for some services right now sinceI don't think we're working toward complementary goals.

But what was I just saying in that last post? Get creative. Brainstorm. I was coaching a friend the other day to talk to everyone she knows and ask for help. I've been doing that, but without purpose or direction. I really haven't asked for help with my plan, I've been asking someone else to make the plan for me. That's not where I'm supposed to be at this point.

And that's what it is. I need to get clarity on the plan. I've known this for weeks but I've been avoiding it. It's like what I was saying yesterday: the answers are usually right there in front of you, you just need someone else to point them out for you.