Build A Blog

My Career Timeline – Part 3

Written by Mandy

2003 – Present

Hard Decisions

My husband and I did have children in fact we had 2, a son and then 3 years later a daughter. They are a huge blessing to us and our lives have changed completely since having them in so many ways. But after having our son I was looking to go back to work after maternity leave, it became clear that it wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought and there were going to be some hard decisions to make. The Advertising Agency I worked for were unable to make my hours more flexible, so I had to decide

Could I live with working long and irregular hours and not see much of my son in the week.
Should I give up everything I had worked for over the past 3 years and more, building myself a career, to see more of my son.

Well there was no competition for me, I couldn’t live with hardly seeing him all week. Our priorities had changed and our son had to come first, I would just have to find another way. So I gave up my job in search of one with more flexible working hours. Although there was no competition it was still a hard decision to make, after all my hard work I had to just walk away. I felt like I was back at square one. I knew it was the right thing to do though. If I did have to start all over again, then that’s just the way it was going to be. Should I give up work altogether until my children were older and then go back to work or could I find another job that suited us better? Again another dilemma and a hard decision to make. But nobody said parenthood was going to be easy.

So What Did I Do?

I didn’t want to give up on having a job/career altogether, but if you take a child out of a childcare place, which had been arranged since before he was born then we would lose it, and the place I had was a really good one. So we decided that I should find a part time job in the meantime to be able to afford to keep the childcare place. So I went to work part time in a large DIY chain of stores as a customer advisor, while I was there we had our 2nd child our daughter. If nothing else you can say I am flexible, because this was another huge departure from anything I had done before. But it was only a stop gap until I could decide what I was going to do.

But when I sat down and thought what do I actually want from a job it came out something like this: I wanted complete flexibility in the working hours so I could be there if they were ill or there was a school trip etc. I wanted bank holidays off because the childminder closed on those days and Christmas (which you didn’t get in the DIY store) and to pick my holidays when I wanted them rather than fighting with all the other people on my shift and generally losing. Not much of a wish list then!!!

This just screamed ‘work at home’ to me. But how and what could I do? It was now or never, could I start and run a business from home and be there for the kids? Being self employed and running a business had been a long time ambition of mine. But I had always pushed it to the back of my mind and never committed to it. But now I was being presented with the chance to actually put my dream into action as a solution to a my problem. It’s like it was hitting me in the face and saying here’s your chance. But by now I was not that naive and I new it wasn’t that simple. Working from home and starting a business is one thing, but doing it with 2 small children in tow and trying to work around them was a totally different proposition.

So How Did I Get Here Writing This Blog?

So with that in mind I started to look at what I could do. Could I make money through using what I had learned over the past 15 years plus. At first I looked at my experiences and what I was qualified in, like proofreading which I had done while at the Advertising Agency. But that didn’t really get anywhere because I didn’t love it. I only chose it because I had experience, but I should have known that doing a job you don’t love will get you nowhere fast. It was then that I realised if self employment was going to work for me, I would have to let my guard down and go for what I loved to do (and actually listen to my own advice).

The scariest part about this was failure and the fear of. The reason I had never attempted it before, was the thought of failing at working from home doing something creative that I really wanted to do, and this was my biggest stumbling block.

Taking The Leap

But I realised that if I didn’t give it a go (even if I failed) then I would regret it, you don’t get anywhere without trying. Writing was something new that I had got into and enjoyed, and I knew a lot about publications from working at the Advertising Agency. So I started looking into making money through writing and photography. While doing this I heard through a newsletter about making money on the internet, through affiliate promotions using Google Adwords. And seeing as there were not many doors opening for me I looked into it. So that’s how I started running my own business through trying to make money on the internet, I kind of fell into it. The first thing I noticed was that it was a lot harder than it was made out to be, by other internet marketers. And I felt I wanted to be a bit more creative with my online activities, so I started looking at what else you could do besides just Adwords to make a living.

It was then that I first heard about blogs, and I was really intrigued because I could incorporate my writing into blogs as well as my photos and photography. They have huge potential and are ideal for what I wanted to do, so I started trying out blogs and writing them. I really enjoyed writing blogs and I found them exciting and fulfilling from the creative point of view. Blogs or Weblogs as they are sometimes known suited me well as a communication method for sharing my ideas and thoughts, which is what they were originally used for. Build a Blog is my 4th blog and the culmination of trial and error and experience that I gained from producing and writing my first 3 blogs.

Which is partly why I write this blog, to share my experiences of blogs and blogging, what I have learned along the way and the useful information I have found to do it. With the intention of helping others in similar situations that may be finding it hard going, because lets face it, it can be and the more we help and interact with each other the easier it will become. And plenty of others bloggers have helped and are still helping me along the way, the community and friendships that can be built is one of the attractions of blogging.

It’s still a learning curve and a constant challenge and I have a long way to go, but I love it and I will keep working hard to make my online business endeavours a success. My next project is launching the photography side of my business by starting a blog. Which I am very excited about because as you know this is the part that has been close to my heart for a long time, and I am eager to see how it turns out – stay tuned!

If you would like to find out more about my blogging timeline then I have wrote some articles on this and you can find them on my articles page along with all of my career timeline articles and some other useful information.

Mandy

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