Don’t Quit, Freelance!

Whether you want to quit work to be home with the kids or if you are looking forward to retirement, a great option instead of being unemployed is to freelance. By freelancing your current skills, you can make some money on the side and still have many of the same freedoms found when not working. Freelancers in almost every field are becoming more common. Working at home is easier than ever with new technology and many smaller organizations are eager to hire a temporary worker to take on an extra project. From the employee standpoint, freelancing gives you the ability … Continue reading →

Balancing Work and Life

Over the years, we as a society have shifted in our expectations of work. Back in the 1950s, working a 40-hour week with only one spouse (usually the man) employed was the typical family work life. Over the years, with the booming economy of the 1980s, there became a greater expectation of material needs. Society began to expect workers to go beyond the 40-hour workweek to compete. In addition, dual income families became the norm. Since the new millennium, there has been another shift. More and more families are trying to still compete in the workforce but also find ways … Continue reading →

4 Things You Probably Shouldn’t Talk About at Work

I realize that every office is different and some are more casual than others. However, every job that you ever have should be viewed, at the very least, as a networking opportunity, if not a rung in the ladder. Perhaps you have landed your dream job and have no intentions of ever advancing–but that doesn’t mean that a professional reputation isn’t something to strive for. With that said, here are a few things that are better left discussed after office hours. Other People Nothing speaks more poorly about you than when you dish the goods on someone else. Yet, almost … Continue reading →

When it is Time for a Vacation

Okay, I will admit it: Lately I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed. I have taken on numerous tasks that, while beneficial to myself and to my company, are also piling up on my shoulders like heavy bricks. I’m beginning to feel quite bogged down. For one thing, I have a lot of jobs right now. Most are in the latter stages of completion, but getting them there-in limited amounts of working time since I also stay at home with my two young daughters-has been spastic at best. I’ve worked until midnight and gotten up at five AM so many times … Continue reading →

How to Squeeze in Quality Family Time

Seems that many of us working parents all face the same issue: Finding time to spend with our families. Between work, chores and other necessities, oftentimes family time takes a backseat. We want to do it. We want to go out with the kids and the spouse and spend a day at the beach or in the park, picnicking and talking, but if we take time to do this, how we will get the other things done that we need to do: laundry, chores, grocery shopping, cleaning. This is a common complaint that I hear both in my job and … Continue reading →

Some People Are Trading Down in Order to Spend More Time With Family

Tired of working 60 plus hour work weeks, leaving little time for you to enjoy your family? Stressed out and so tired by the end of a long week that you can’t find it in you to just relax and let go when the weekend rolls around? If you answered yes to either of these questions, and you feel that your job is cramping your lifestyle, perhaps it is time that you consider trading down. What? You spent all of these years clawing your way to the top; how can you just give it up? This idea may be hard … Continue reading →

Working from Home vs Working at Home

I don’t know if I was just the biggest ignoramus ever, or what, but before I took this blogging job, I had no idea there was a difference between those two phrases. I used them interchangeably, and thought nothing of it. I have since come to realize the error of my ways, and in case there are any readers out there who were as uninformed as me, let me make it clear: Working from home is very different from working at home. Many people tout direct sales (Avon, Mary Kay, Tupperware) as being a job for mothers who want to … Continue reading →

A Question A Week

I was sitting at home this morning, busy getting ready for the day, when an odd thought popped into my head, “How many of my readers work at home? How many of them work in an office?” As much as I love this writing job, I usually don’t walk around my house wondering about my readers. And this morning, I realized that was awfully one-sided of me. I should know more about my readers; I want to know more about my readers. So I started to think about all sorts of questions and topics that I would love to get … Continue reading →

Ahoy Captain – Spam Bots on the Horizon!

Okay, so I think I’m a lot funnier than I really am, what can I say? Today, I wanted to talk about spam bots, and why it is that people write their e-mail addresses so strangely (myself is included in that bunch.) First off, spam bots are not large metallic robots crawling all over spam, although that picture is a bit closer to the truth than you might think. Spam bots are programs (robots without the metal body) that are sent out onto the world wide web to search for e-mail addresses. Every time they find one, the data is … Continue reading →