Jen Singer
I wish I could say that I had planned my flexible work life as a writer and author from the very beginning, but I wasn't that visionary in the go-go 80's. Back then, I studied communications in college so I could get a job in the exciting field of advertising, wear tailored suits with big shoulder pads and drink a lot of coffee while planning the next big ad to hit pop culture. I thought I would be like Susan Dey in LA Law , only in the ad biz.
It took me a few years in advertising - years full of late nights and last minute business trips to places like Cleveland and Phoenix - to come to a stark realization: If I stay in this business, I'll never see the kids I plan to have. So I left, choosing to work from home back when it was rare, if not odd to many people.
In fact, in 1994, one client of my writing business actually asked me if I had the ability to send packages, as though I was working on an ice floe off the Alaskan coast. I think he was amazed to discover that UPS would actually drop by my New Jersey condo where I worked.
Lucky for me, technology eventually caught up with my work. Now, I can check my e-mail on my PDA between innings at the third grade Parents vs. Kids kickball game . I can send my editor a chapter of my book at 11 p.m. after the kids have gone to bed, and then spend the next afternoon taking them to piano lessons or to the lake. I can bring my laptop to Philadelphia to blog about the oodles of junk we bought at various gift shops. It all blends seamlessly - or at least that's what I tell myself when I'm on the Cub Scouts zoo trip with a deadline fast approaching.
As a parenting writer, I can mix my work into my kids' lives and vice versa in a way that wasn't possible just a few years ago. While we were in Philly, we saw the Liberty Bell, visited the Constitution Center and toured the Franklin Institute. But we also visited a bookstore to set up a book signing. Plus, the kids swam in the hotel pool while a Newsweek reporter interviewed me on my cell phone poolside. And then there was the radio show my kids and I appeared on. I didn't plan this - couldn't plan this - back in college when I thought I'd work in a skyscraper in suits and high heels for the rest of my life.
A friend once told me that when you work from home, you're never completely at work and never completely at home. For now, anyway, that seems just fine by me - and by my kids, too. Also, by the deejay who wanted to know what my son thought of drawing, Philadelphia and his mom.
Lucky for me, he said he liked all three.
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