The happy life of the self-employed.
I like my life. I certainly haven’t ended up where I ever thought I would, but I’m very happy with my lot. One of the totally unplanned things that has turned out best is my job. I’m a self-employed editor and translator and I work mainly for academics who don’t have English as their mother tongue and who want to publish in English language academic journals. I fell into this type of work purely by accident – a friend asked me to check her doctoral thesis, told others and before I knew what was happening I had a business up and running. That was about six years ago and now I have clients in both Switzerland and Germany. They are nice considerate people. I think I provide them with a good service and they recommend me to their colleagues and year on year the business grows, but not so much that I’m stressed. It helps that after 20 or so years here my German is fluent, and although I never studied English at university level I was always blessed with the ability to write and enjoy the eccentricities of the English language.
For a long time I have been a stay at home mom. My three children are pretty close in age and the Swiss school system makes it very hard to combine work and a family. Daycare is phenomenally expensive and almost impossible to find and the children come home from primary school every day for lunch, have free afternoons several times a week when they are small and need quite a lot of parental support with homework. It is only in the last couple of years that we have been able to count on all the children being at school from 8-12 every morning. There were several years when one daughter would have school from 8-11, the other from 9-12 and my Kindergartener something inbetween. It made it tricky to do the weekly shop – so forget about fitting a career around that sort of a schedule. All sports activities are organized separately from the school and if you live in a small village as I do and your child wants to take lessons in, well anything at all really, you spend a lot of time in the car ferrying them around in the afternoon and early evening. If you aren’t around, well your child misses out.
I was very happy to give up my former career – I was (still am theoretically) a chartered accountant (CPA to any Americans out there) working for one of the big four accountancy firms auditing banks and specialized in the accounting for derivatives. This morning in the shower I was mulling things over and it hit me that I was so very lucky to have escaped from that world when I did. The recent financial crisis would have been a nightmare coming true if I had still been auditing banks. I thank my lucky stars that I never had to deal with that one.
So I stayed home and looked after my children. If the truth be known I would have had huge difficulty entrusting them into anyone else’s care and while I was frequently exhausted and run ragged, I’m glad I did. I realize now that what I had was a privilege that many women today can’t afford. If we had been living in the US or UK, things would probably have looked very different. Those were – and still are – special years.
Now the children are older and pretty independent and school hours are longer. I can’t think that there is any life that I would prefer to have. I can organize my work around my life, so that things that are important to me – like running, quilting, knitting and blogging all have their place and I have my work to keep my little grey cells ticking over too. When the sun shines I can stop and sit in the garden and drink a cup of tea. I’m always here if a child is sick or when they come home from school and need help with homework or someone to listen to the dramas going on in their lives. I don’t feel I need a highfalutin career title to justify my existence. It helps of course that I’m happy home alone. Many women aren’t and need to get out and meet other adults in the workplace just to keep their sanity. I love seeing my friends, but I love time alone too.
I feel happy in my own skin. If you want to know about work-life balance, it’s right here. I’m living it.
Helen
May 22nd, 2010 at 6:51 am
Lovely to get to know you a little more Helen. How wonderful for you to be able to care for your children at home, as well as work from home. I do love getting out and meeting others, but I also love my home time where I can create quilts and play with colour til my hearts content. How lucky we are! xo
May 22nd, 2010 at 8:25 am
I was one of those run-ragged mothers who never have time for anything. When I had my eldest son we couldn’t afford for me to give up work as a teacher so I used to commute 35 miles one way with my son and meet my mother who would travel 17 miles to meet me. She would then take my son home with her and then in the evening we would do the same thing in reverse. We did this everyday for 5 years until my son was old enough to go to come to school with me. When my youngest son was born my friend (an ex-teacher) became my childminder. So yes life was tough – but much harder when I had to become a mother to not only my sons but my parents who both had dementia. As a result of working too hard I became ill. However five years later I now run my own business and, like you, I adore every minute. I once asked my sons if they felt they had missed out on me being a working mum and they said they wouldn’t have had it any other way – which absolved me of a whole lot of guilt.