Can Mommy Make Some Money?

Cassie didn’t wake up until 7 AM yesterday. Today she’s up again at 6. Yesterday actually went pretty calmly for me. Today I’m back to wondering if I’m going to blow a gasket from handling a cranky three-year-old all day long. It amazes me how much difference that one hour to myself makes.

Anyway, today’s topic – can Mommy make money? I quit working outside the home about five years or more ago. Basically, I hated my job. It was tedious, most of the people I worked with were too stupid to live, and I worked 80 hours but only got paid for 40. Still that pay wasn’t bad – forty-two thousand a year for building briefings and running a conference room that made me want to tear my hair out. I had to quit. I had reached a point where just the thought of going into work made me want to puke. To this day, fluorescent lighting and cubicles send me rushing to the john.

Now I’m at home, where the work is still frustrating, but more enjoyable (yes, believe it or not, I am having a good time being my usual bitchy self). The problem is, I’m not making very much money. I had hoped that after five years of working on my own, I’d have figured out a way to make at least five thousand a year, but I’m not even making two grand at this point. Somehow, I’ve got to turn that around.

The question is, how? With child number two almost here, I know my work schedule is going to be damned tricky. I’ve set up a workstation at the glider so I can handle e-mail and write while I work. I should be able to do graphics as well, since I’ve got my Wacom table hooked up to the laptop. I did a lot of writing by hand when I was nursing Cassie (all of it porn!), but it all stayed in the three-ring binder I was scribbling in. None of it ever saw the light of day, and none of it ever made me money.

What that writing did do was get me into the habit of writing on a daily basis, and I’m hoping that this time around I can get into the habit of doing productive, money making work while nursing Samantha. I just have to see if I can nurse, handle a three-year-old, and write or draw at the same time. I also have to find a market for whatever work I turn out. Should be easy, right?

My other option is to do the Fly Lady thing of working in fifteen minute blocks throughout the day – fifteen minutes of writing, fifteen minutes of cleaning, fifteen minutes of playing with the kids, fifteen minutes of break, fifteen minutes of drawing, fifteen minutes of whatever, and keep rotating through the things I want to do for the first several weeks after Sam is born. I have no clue if it’ll work, but I’ll give it a try. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now – taking fifteen minutes to write this blog entry. I’m down to my last 2 1/2 minutes, and it seems to be working at the moment. The real test will come in the next few months.

Time’s up. Gotta go. Have a bitchy, y’all.