'I Have a Love/Hate Relationship with Working at Home' post

I have a love/hate relationship with working at home. I love the fact that I can work (my business) at any time of the day. Yet, I hate the fact that I can work my business any time of the day. You see I tend to work to much. I wake up and work at 3:00 a.m. If I wasn’t working at home I’d probably read or paint. I work first thing upon rising. I work after dinner. I know about the advantages of setting hours for working at home. But that’s sometimes a little easier said than done.

I love the fact that I am home with my kids all day long. I hate the fact that I am home with kids all day long. Don’t get me wrong this is one of the perks I really do love about having a home-based business. But I find that my kids resent that I am home, but not really home. I’m home, but on the phone, on a conference call, or working on the computer. They love my business, they respect my entrepreneurial spirit, but sometimes I think they wish for a mom that always had the laundry done, and regularly baked cookies like I use to. In other words I may be here physically, but not truly 100% here for them.

I love the friendships I’ve made as a result of my work-at-home business. I’ve met wonderful people that I wouldn’t have met without this business. But I do miss the sense of community you get with a corporate job.

Today I stumbled upon a post at lifehack.org, produced by some Open Source techies who have created a co-working community. Coworking is a cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents. You can see their video below.

Now I’m wondering if this would work for us stay-at-home working moms - something like a “Mom’s Cafe.” A place where we could work part-time, or even full-time if desired. I’m picturing a sunny lofty type of office where we could come in and work for a few hours a day, and then return home to our families leaving our business life behind us. I’m thinking perhaps their are quite a few of us BookWise associates, Pampered Chef representatives, Avon representatives, and the like that would perhaps love a place to set-up a shared office space.

So you work-at-home moms, what do you think? Do you see a benefit to this? Is this something that you could see yourself participating in.

You can find additional information at , at pbwiki.com, at podtech.net or the coworking community blog.

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Comments:
1 Comment posted on "I Have a Love/Hate Relationship with Working at Home"
Eva on July 5th, 2007 at 11:35 pm #

I co-own a co-working space in Portland, Oregon called CubeSpace and we have several working moms who use our space just as you describe. Because we offer the flexibility of using CubeSpace for as little as an hour, we have had mom’s come in for a marathon work session when they have someone to take care of their kids.

The challenge we face (and I mention this because we are eager for any help in resolving our challenge) is a paucity of day care facilities (let alone drop-in day care) in our neighborhood. We are in a former industrial area with a gazillion doggy day care facilities, but none for children. We have contacted Multnomah County’s Childcare Referral Service and gotten their list of facilities within a 10 mile radius, and there really is nothing within walking distance of CubeSpace.

So, if someone wants to open a far care facility near by and accept drop-in kids, we would love to partner with you!


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