If you want to create a happier, calmer, and more flexible life, start with your JOB. Your job may not be the source of your happiness, but it’s how you spend the majority of your LIFE. If your job is less than lackluster or it’s keeping you from living your life in a way that makes you happy, it may be time to ditch it and create something new. You may need a career webover.
A career webover is an online makeover for your career. Here’s how you do it. You take your career experience and you combine it with your academic skills, personal skills, and hobbies to transition your career from the office to the internet. Once you start your career webover, you can work from your laptop anywhere in the world—whenever you want.
Here are 9 signs mama needs a career webover.
1. You dread Sundays
Like with a passion, you despise Sundays. It’s a free day to spend with your family but at the back of your mind, you know tomorrow is Monday and you go to work. Sunday night you prep for Monday and all the while you’re dreading it. You used to love your job. You used to be the ideal employee; you’d be in early and stay late. You still LOVE your job, and you’re grateful for it, but you’re juggling a lot of new priorities and work is just one of many. If we’re being honest, it’s not the most important one anymore either.
2. You spend more time away than with family.
For some, this is a good thing but for you, it’s miserable. When you factor in your work day and your commute, you’re away 8-12 hours a day. Your kids are at daycare all day. They don’t even notice how long they’re away from you anymore. They’ve gotten used to it. You haven’t. You think about them all day and you wish you could find a way to spend more time with them before they’re stuck in school.
3. You feel stuck
You’re so lucky. At least that what your friends tell you. You are. You have a wonderful job that’s totally understanding of your situation, but you’re kinda bored. You’ve been doing the same thing with the same people for a while now. There’s little to no variety and hardly any chance at all to be creative. But, you need a job and this is better than most of the alternatives. Still, that doesn’t make you any less over it.
4. Getting through the week exhaust you
So, being bored is also exhausting. Bored doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to do. On the contrary, if you’re like most of the moms who visit Not for Sissies, you have a gazillion and one things to do every.single.day. You’re just uninspired by most of them and doing anything that doesn’t inspire you takes extra energy: the physical kind and the mental kind.
5. Your life happens on the weekends
All those things you want to do, you squeeze as many of them as you can into the weekend. You try a new recipe, reorganize a room, a desk, and a drawer. You take the kids to that new spot in town or you walk aimlessly around Target. Sure you have a list, but …mmm Target. You take that second glance at your husband because you married a good-looking man, and don’t ogle the eye candy often enough.
6. You daydream about winning the lottery
You find yourself daydreaming about being independently wealthy and the only way you imagine that happening is if you get a windfall of cash (or win the lottery), but you don’t play the lottery. You’re too smart. You see the lotto as a stupid person’s tax, so you don’t play but you still want the cash, the wealth, and the independence. You want to invest in a winner—not chance.
7. You don’t want to telecommute.
You just want to be at home. Everyone wants to telecommute, but you know telecommuting is still working. You can’t just lie and say you’re telecommuting when you’re actually taking your kids to the park. Someone would find you out and you’d get fired. That would be bad. You just want to stay home, not work, and get paid. Telecommuting is like the diet version of your favorite dessert. You want the full fat full sugary goodness of your favorite treat not the fat-free sugar-free cardboard version. You want the freedom to stay at home AND make a living without having to constantly feel like your boss is going to call or you ‘should’ be doing more work.
8. You don’t have time for kid-free fun
Your weekdays and weekends are packed with kid activities, family activities, and family logistics. When you aren’t exhausted (and you’re always exhausted), you cram your fun in the time between the kids’ bedtime and the time you fall asleep. Sometimes you get 3 hours. Sometimes you get 30 minutes. However it happens, you don’t get to have a whole lot of fun. But parents don’t get to have fun—at least that’s what you tell yourself.
9. Your LIFE revolves around your JOB
Everything in your life revolves around a job that you don’t really like. So the things you love and want to spend more time doing get pushed to the backburner behind your job, which is easily not the most loved joyous part of your life.
If even one of these 9 signs strikes a chord with you then you may need to think about finding an exit strategy for your job. Consider that your exit strategy may not be another job. Perhaps it’s just time for you—mama—to branch out on your own. It may be time for you to give your career a webover and create a career on your own terms. I know it’s scary, but it’s absolutely possible. You could totally do it…if you wanted it badly enough.
