I just read a thought provoking post by Stephanie Romero about transitioning between work and home. It made me think about my experience as a home – based professional parent. There are some transitions between work and home that do happen in my life. However, I had not given them much thought until reading Stephanie’s post. Now that I think about it, the transitions that are an automatic part of what I do are rather important.
One of my home – based businesses is my very small law practice. As part of the work that I do for my clients, I occasionally have to go to court. When I must go to court, I make a transition between home and work as I leave my boys in the care of their father, their aunt, or their grandparents and drive to the courthouse. The courthouse is a half hour away, so I have a good amount of time to mentally prepare myself for being in court. If I am using the car that has a radio in it (long story, only one of our two cars has a radio in it) then I often listen to classical music or find an interesting program on public radio. For some reason, listening to classical music or public radio programming makes me feel like more of a grown up and helps me to get out of “Mommy mode” and into lawyer mode.
The transition that happens on the ride to the courthouse is important, but the transition that happens on the way home is even more so. The work that I do in court is very emotionally involved, and hearings can be very stressful. Once the hearing is over, I drive home. That half hour drive is very important because it enables me to let go of what happened in court (at least for a while until I can work on it some more on my work time) and get myself in a proper state of mind to go home and be with my children. I walk in the door and head straight to the bedroom to change into play clothes. Once the play clothes are on, Mommy is home.
Another transition happens every day. Since my boys are two months old and two and a half years old, the only time that I can work is when they are napping or sleeping. Our evening routine of dinner, bath/pajamas/brush teeth, books, and bedtime is their transition to sleep and my transition to work time. Every night, after I put them to bed I go downstairs, turn on the computer, and start working. Sometimes, Blake (the two month old) is awake when Dylan falls asleep so he comes “to work” with me and hangs out on a nursing pillow on my lap.
The transitions that happen naturally as part of my work help my brain to shift from “Mommy mode” to “work mode” and vice versa. When the kids are older and I am able to do some work while they are at school or playing together, I may have to create some transitions of my own if I start to feel like that is necessary.