Day 1 - From Stay-At-Home-Mum to Work-At-Home-Mum - diary of a transition

I'm in the process of trying to make the transition from being a Stay-at-Home-Mum to my two gorgeous children, to being a Work-at-home-mum.  Having spent more than five years at home, I'm yearning to work.  Not just for the money, though that would certainly come in handy and make me feel as though I'm contributing a bit more.  It's more that, while I love being a mummy, I do feel that I have a bit more to offer the world, especially now that C is at school and Bug is approaching that milestone too.  I've thought about going back to Primary School Teaching, but I've spent a few years without a boss now (don't tell Hubby!), and I think I'd prefer to keep it that way.  In addition, I've other, creative urges that I want to experiment with, writing and crafting.  I'd like to try being a WAHM, developing my own portfolio career/business with the flexibility to be at home with the children on the holidays, before and after school and if they are sick.  If it doesn't work out, then maybe I'll reconsider, and get back to the interactive whiteboard and teaching.

I've set myself some increasing targets for each month, which will hopefully lead to some increasing income too.  These include writing blog posts, in the long run I'd like to be able to do some sponsored posts and get some small income from Google adsense; writing articles for i-writer; writing and submitting magazine articles; completing and submitting a couple of my books; making more items to sell, and selling them using etsy, folksy and craft fairs. 

The trouble is, that I sometimes get to the end of the day and don't feel as though I've achieved anything.  If I'm honest though, these aren't days where nothing has been achieved, these are just the days when being a stay-at-home-mum, trumps being a work-at-home-mum.  I'm actually doing plenty, it's just that none of it is progress towards my work goals.  So I thought I'd keep this diary of my transition from one to the other, in the hope that seeing how I get on might help other mums to decide whether or not they can do it too, and also to help me maintain my sanity, by reminding me that the mum bit of WAHM is just as important as the work bit.

Today, for example, I achieved no work at all.  Absolutely none.  Here's what I did achieve: did a load of ironing; took C to school; popped to B&Q to get some varnish for Garden shapes; collected dry-cleaning; prepared stuff for Beaver Scout Christmas party while simultaneously supervising Bug as she painted stars and cut up bits of card; had lunch with Bug and made the dinner ready for reheating later; settled Bug for a nap...she refused to settle without me cuddling in with her...so that was two hours of snoozing! Collected C from school and drove 40 minutes to Fownhope to run the Beaver Scout Christmas Party (stand-in Beaver Leader!), then 40 minutes back; the kids had eaten at the party, so they got ready for bed and settled down; ate dinner with Hubby; walked the dog.  And that's the sum of my day!  Will definitely get some work done tomorrow.  I've a load of garden decoration shapes to finish painting for a start.  Watch this space to see how I get on.  Future SAHM-WAHM posts will be shorter, I just wanted to introduce it this first time.