A Work at Home Mom’s Blog

I made it through my interview yesterday. As much as I hate job interviews, this one wasn’t too bad. I think I did well, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much. But I may need a super-sized jar of anti-wrinkle cream by the time they get back to me.

The interviewer seemed to be impressed by my ability to work without supervision and my ability to follow through as evidenced by my journey toward becoming a freelance writer. She asked me lots of questions about that, which was good, because talking about it always gets me in a positive, enthusiastic mood. I just hope that gave me enough brownie points to get me the job.

If anybody needs me, I’ll be sitting here biting my nails until further notice. (Actually I don’t bite my nails, I clench my jaw, which is more painful but doesn’t result in damage to my nails. But you get the idea.)

“Gloom, despair and agony on me-e!
Deep dark depression, excessive misery-y!
If it weren’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all!
Gloom, despair and agony on me-e-e!”
- The Hee Haw Cast

This has been the story of my life for way too long. I’m ready for a change, and I’m hopeful that it’s happening right now.

A couple of awesome things happened last week. First, I got an out-of-the-blue email from a former writing client. When I saw it in my inbox, I figured she was just checking in to see if I was doing any better than when she last heard from me nearly a year ago, because she’s nice like that. That was part of it, but she also said that I was welcome to come back to work for her any time.

After I recovered from the shock of it all, I emailed her back with an apology for flaking out and an enthusiastic “Yes, please, I would love to come back to work for you right now!” She immediately assigned me a small batch of articles. That made me very happy.

The next day, something told me to check the balance in the bank account, even though I hadn’t made any deposits, written any checks or used the debit card lately, and there weren’t any automatic bill pays scheduled. I found that both our federal and state tax refunds had been deposited early. Between that and the reunion with one of my favorite clients, what started out as a rough week turned out to be one of the best I’ve had in a while.

I hope the good luck holds out a little longer, because I’ve got an interview for an hourly work-at-home position this afternoon. I’m really hoping to get this one. If I do, maybe I won’t have to keep applying for gigs writing about running shoes or washing machines or safe diet pills only to never hear anything back any more. And that would be truly awesome.

At any rate, at least I don’t have to constantly worry about the finances for now. And even if the job isn’t in the cards, maybe something else will come up before the tax money is gone. Now that a couple of things have gone my way, it’s not such a struggle to be optimistic.

I noticed something strange about my work habits some time ago, but it’s recently become more pronounced. During the day, when I’m here by myself, I have a lot of trouble concentrating. I’ve tried turning on music, but then I want to concentrate on the music instead of my work. And I just can’t bring myself to leave the TV on in the background because it’s such a waste of electricity.

Around the time Pumpkin gets home, that’s when I start getting into work mode. But then I have to keep her company for a while and help her with her homework. I try to work when she starts playing video games or talking to friends on the phone, but the noise keeps breaking my concentration. And when Hubby is here, there’s no hope for concentrating on much of anything most of the time.

You might think that I just have all-around trouble concentrating regardless of my work environment, and to a certain extent that’s true. But late at night, after everyone else is in bed and it’s quiet again, it seems that I’m the most productive. I still have trouble concentrating, but it’s easier to work through it.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that my brain doesn’t really start focusing until late in the day. I suppose I could invest in some of those noise-canceling headphones to wear when Pumpkin and Hubby are here and I’m trying to work, but then I would worry about Pumpkin getting hurt or something and not being able to hear her yell for help. For now, it looks like my best solution is to do most of my work late at night.

As I mentioned last week, I sold the domain to my other blog. If you were also a reader of that one, you can now find it at kristypruitt.com/momspinchingpenniesagain. I’m not sure whether I’ll be updating it any more, but all of my past articles are there for posterity.

Anyway, there will be lots of nail biting going on here until I get the payment for that. We’re a bit behind on the bills, and I was counting on that money to get caught up. But we’ll just have to hang in there until it gets here. That’s all we can do. At least we’re not facing foreclosure or repossession or cutoffs or anything like that.

I just hope we end up getting a little something back on our taxes. I have everything I need to do them, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I guess I’m subconsciously putting it off, because I know that if we do get anything back, it won’t be much due to our financial situation last year. And worse, we might even end up owing the state some money. But I do need to get that done and over with so we know what’s going on.

Oh, I almost forgot. A lady over at Career Overview emailed me last month to let me know that this blog was featured on their list of 60 Truly Inspiring Blogs for Stay-at-Home Moms. About my blog, they said “Kristy’s personal blog is honest about the challenges of balancing parenting and working at home.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. It’s not all sunshine and happiness, and sometimes it can be downright difficult. But the rewards are many, and if I ever do go back to working outside the home, it will be because I have no other choice. But anyway, do check out that list. I plan to when I have the time.

The past week has been so full of ups and downs, I feel like I’ve been riding a roller coaster. I’ve even had the nausea to prove it.

It all started Sunday night, when Pumpkin got up vomiting. She was out of school for two days with a horrid stomach bug. I had planned to get lots of work and work hunting done, but that didn’t happen since I was waiting on her hand and foot and barely getting out of her sight. Taking care of her is the most important thing to me, no question. But I really needed to try and make some money, because Hubby was supposed to be losing his only source of income.

In the meantime, I got an offer to buy the domain name of my other blog. I named a price, based on the average of what several of those website value estimators said, and heard nothing back for a few days. I assumed that the prospective buyer wasn’t interested in paying much for it and mourned the loss of that extra income.

The night before Pumpkin went back to school, I found out that I had the virus that she had just gotten over. That morning, Hubby woke up with it, too. We were completely useless that day, and yet again I got no work done. Most people would have just grabbed their laptop backpacks and camped out in bed or on the couch, and gotten at least a thing or two done. But no laptop here, therefore no can work if I can’t drag myself to my computer desk.

I heard back from the prospective buyer, and was offered a much lower price for the domain name. After a lot of thinking and weighing the pros and cons of selling, I decided that I would take a lower price, but not quite that low. So I made a counteroffer that I thought we could both agree to. And it worked. The buyer’s agent set up the transaction, payment was sent to them, and I followed the instructions to initiate the transfer.

Then I found out that it would be twenty days until I would receive my money. The domain registrar has it, but they don’t send it until twenty days after the agreement is made. So there went my plans to get the mortgage and some other bills up to date.

The next day, Hubby got a piece of mail. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it looks like his money will now be coming in for a few months longer. That will be helpful. But had I known that, I don’t know if I would have taken the price I did for my domain.

Somewhere along the way, I got an email from one of my contacts informing me that he had received a virus email sent from my email address. I had suspected that something was wrong with my computer for a while, because it was running slower and doing a couple of other strange things. But my usual virus and malware scans had turned up nothing. I spent an entire day working through the steps outlined at Major Geeks in an attempt to eradicate it. It seems to have paid off, because I have seen no further signs of possible infection. But there was yet another day when I got no paying work or job hunting done.

Speaking of which, I still haven’t had a bit of luck finding any projects or ongoing gigs. I picked out some articles from Demand Studios to do, but writing them is slow going since I haven’t written for them in so long. And a lot of their titles turn out to be impossible to write after some research, so that’s pretty hit or miss. Maybe when the proceeds from my domain sale come in I’ll feel comfortable enough to work on some of my own projects. Until then, I’ll keep looking for work from others.

So that’s my roller-coaster week in a nutshell. I really hope next week is much less eventful. Or at least eventful only in good ways.

I’ve still been applying for every writing gig I can find that I’m qualified for and interested in. And I’ve still heard nothing back from any of them. Well, I did hear back from one, but it was just a form letter saying that they start out at a penny per word and to email them back if still interested. Needless to say, I deleted that one. I’m an experienced writer, and I don’t work for peanuts.

There are bills to pay and no money to pay them. Depression is trying its best to set in, and anxiety is sending my brain into a tizzy. But I’m fighting those demons with all I’ve got, and I refuse to let them get the best of me. If I’m going to get through this, I have to be clearheaded and focused.

I plan on working on some things that provide ongoing income rather than doing the work and getting paid once. Like setting up some websites to generate affiliate income, or writing some ebooks. But those things take time to start bringing money in, and right now I need something that pays quickly. Once I get some steady work with steady pay coming in, I can work on the other stuff.

I’m not giving up this time. I can’t afford to. Giving up is what got me where I am right now, and I’m not letting it take me down any further.

The Head Cold from Hell seems to finally be going away, at least for me. I think poor Pumpkin is getting it, though. At least she hasn’t had to worry about missing school, because it’s been called off all week due to the dreadful weather we’ve been having.

I’ve had to pamper her today since she wasn’t feeling well, in addition to trying to get myself back into the groove. So I’m up late tonight. It was the only way to get some peace and quiet so I could actually get a thing or two done. I haven’t accomplished as much as I had hoped to, but at least I’m getting something done.

I can already tell it’s going to be hard getting my motivation back. It always is whenever something breaks it. But I’ve got to do it. I’ve been working on minimizing my online distractions by doing things like organizing my Firefox bookmarks and unsubscribing from RSS feeds that are not work-related. Maybe that way I’ll spend less time doing things like reading news that isn’t all that important or comparing prices on Xbox 360 HDMI cables and more time bringing home the bacon.

I’ve also started utilizing a planner again. I’ve tried doing that on several occasions, but I always seem to give up on it after a few weeks. At least this time I didn’t buy one. I printed out a free one from KristensGuide.com. Actually I just printed out the first few weeks of the year since I didn’t have much ink, but if I can make myself keep using it I’ll print out the whole year. I hope I can, because it seems to increase my productivity quite a bit.

I’m slightly behind on my work since I had to take several days off, but I hope to be caught up by next week. If I can do that, maybe my motivation will return and all will be well.

They say opposites attract. And in my marriage, that has certainly rung true. Hubby and I are different in so many ways it’s not even funny. One of our biggest differences has to do with our natural sleep cycles. He is the type who likes to go to bed early, and I’ve always been one to sit up late.

In a way that can be a good thing, what with me being a writer. I need a quiet environment in order to get the maximum amount of work done, and it’s certainly quiet around here after he and Pumpkin go to bed. Trouble is, he always wants me to come to bed when he does.

That wasn’t a problem for a while. I had been staying tired all the time, so I didn’t have much trouble falling asleep at night. In fact, I got into the habit of going to bed early there for a while. But I’ve had a bit more energy lately, and it’s resulted in lots of tossing and turning when I turn in at a “normal” time. At first I thought I needed to find some good sleeping pills. But then I realized that that wasn’t the case at all. I just needed to follow my body’s rhythms and start staying up later.

So here I am, up after midnight, blogging and getting various other tasks squared away. I’ll probably hit the hay soon, not because I’m particularly tired, but because I have to get up and get Pumpkin ready for school in the morning. It might take me a little while to go to sleep, but I’ll be much better off than if I had tried to go to bed a couple of hours ago.

There was a time when Hubby protested fiercely when I tried to stay up late, but he’s gotten accustomed to it for the most part. He still talks me into going to bed earlier than I should sometimes, but most of the time he doesn’t give me much static. Besides, when I get a laptop and wireless Internet, I’ll be able to work in bed until I’m ready to sleep. Then, hopefully, we’ll both be satisfied.

It appears that I still haven’t recovered from the whole writer’s block thing I had last month. Self-doubt is creeping in, and it’s really driving me nuts. Not to mention that I’m behind on my work yet again.

I’ve seriously considered going back to a regular job, and that’s not improving my mental state at all. I hate the thought of going back to working on someone else’s schedule, to make money for some faceless corporation. But even more than that, I hate the idea of no longer being able to call myself a writer. I truly love writing (at least when I’m not fighting tooth and nail to formulate a sentence), and when someone asks me what I do for a living, I’m proud to tell them. I couldn’t say that when I was flipping burgers, or running a machine, or even overseeing customer service.

I really think I need some medication or some therapy or something. But I can’t afford to go to the doctor over it. I’m going to have to either dig out a letter I got months ago or see if they’ll accept a statement from the Medicaid office before I can get a discount at the doctor’s office again, and even if I do, I’ll have to pay full price for my prescriptions. If only I could find some low cost health insurance, that wouldn’t be a problem. But as it stands there’s not much I can do about the situation.

It looks like I’m going to have to postpone my Windows 7 party and cancel my other weekend plans so I can sit in front of the computer and wish I could write. I probably won’t get much more work done than if I had kept my plans, but I couldn’t live with not being able to at least say I tried to get everything done.

Beyond that, I’m totally at a loss for what to do. I know I have to do something to support my family, and I know how I want to accomplish that. But for some reason, the words are just out of reach. And even if I wasn’t so opposed to reentering the job market, there just aren’t many jobs to be had right now.

Well, I guess I’m done ranting and raving for now. At least I managed to write a somewhat coherent blog post. Maybe now I can work my way up to an article or two.

Today is a new day. I’m still not in the best of moods, but much improved. Gotta forge ahead.

I have a ton of stuff to do today. I’ve got to finish up on the scholarship research I’m doing for SuperCollege. I need to get my Foreman Grill review done. And I need to get something done around the house.

I had planned to use Pumpkin’s MP3 player to record some audio for the video review of the grill. But it appears that she has lost it. Wonderful. I’ve been trying to come up with a Plan B, but so far haven’t figured anything out. I don’t have a microphone that will work with my computer, so using Sound Recorder is out of the question. I guess I’ll be going through the house with a fine-toothed comb trying to find that MP3 player.

I also need to find some pens. Every time I’ve needed to write something down for the past few days, I’ve had to hunt high and low for one. Most of the time I end up using a Sharpie, which I hate to do because they’re not cheap. Maybe next time I go to town I’ll stop by the bank and grab a handful of their promotional pens that they keep on the counter. Then I’ll bring them home and hide them from everybody else.

But despite all that I have to do, I’m going to try my best not to make any actual plans. I’m really a go-with-the-flow kind of person anyway, but it’s hard to get anything accomplished that way. So I’ve been trying to be a little more structured. But in this house, structure is absolutely impossible. I might as well learn to accept that.