Getting moving again after maternity leave. (I’m Still Working On It…)

It’s been a very long time since I last did a post about how I’m getting on with my new business. It was 1st December in fact!

It’s not that I haven’t been busy. It’s just that I haven’t  actually finished anything, so there hasn’t been much to talk about. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like to say too much about a project until it’s  almost complete. It feels like I’m going to jinx it. So in the last few months I’ve been writing blog posts on useful stuff that I’ve learned along the way, rather than much about me personally.

So what have I been doing? Well, I’ve been working on a couple of books. One that will be a free e-book download from this blog. It’s called ‘Business Plus Baby: 10 Things You Need To Know If You’re  Starting A Business And Have A Baby’.  The other will be a print book, produced by a publisher and available on Amazon. Very exciting indeed, but I don’t want to say any more than that yet! (Except that it’s about starting a business as a mum, but that’s not very surprising!)

My other project has been learning copywriting. I’ve been writing training materials for many years, but now I want to turn that into writing for/about business (and the web in particular). This blog has been a fabulous way to get started and now I’m working on building my portfolio so I can launch my copywriting business. I’ll be writing about my ups and downs on this blog, so watch this space…

Oh, and I’ve also been looking after the little Lindops, now aged eight months and only just two years. Like I said, I’ve been busy…

How have I been fitting it all in? I work evenings when the babies are in bed and occasionally when they sleep at the same time in the afternoons. Some days I’m amazed at how all those little bits of time add up, on others I’m incredibly frustrated at how s-l-o-o-o-w this process really is. And yes, I’m tired most of the time.

It’s been bearable so far, but I wouldn’t want my working life to be like this in the long term. But with two such little kids I’m stuck in the catch-22 where I can’t afford the childcare until I earn an income, but I can’t find the time to do much work without childcare.

There are a couple of local pre-schools that take toddlers from age two, so I’m thinking about starting my toddler at one of these and getting some babysitting help with the baby. That would buy me a few extra day-time hours each week to work. With any luck I can gradually build up my working hours as the little ones get bigger and the nursery vouchers come in at age three.

In my December post, I mentioned that I was taking a multiple streams approach to starting a business. One of my streams was going to be doing some admin for a friend. That stream has dried up, thanks to the recession. But this has freed up time for me to get stuck into my books and copywriting, so I’m not too upset about it.

If you have any advice or suggestions for me please leave me a comment!

(photo by Twid)

Tagged as: Getting Started, Mumpreneur