From working mom to stay at home mom – let the adventure begin!!!

As a career girl turned working mom, I’ve always been a pretty driven person. I’ve worked in marketing for nearly 10 years and love the creativity that comes along with it, especially the fun new stuff like blogging and social media! In recent years, I’ve been fortunate enough to have a fantastic job that really gave me the freedom to take on new professional challenges and spread my wings. I really loved my job, and better yet, I loved that it was STRESS FREE. Coming from other positions that were stressed to the max, this was like heaven. Unfortunately, good things don’t always last forever. Shortly after returning from maternity leave I got a new boss and everything started changing for me. Suddenly the job I loved was slipping away, stress was flooding in, and it just wasn’t the right fit anymore. So, long story short, I parted ways with my company last week and here I am, contemplating my next move.

Now what??

Hmm… do I find another job in marketing, or do I scratch that itch I’ve had to spend more quality time with my 18 month old daughter Annabelle, and stay home for a bit? Ever since returning to work full time after having AB, I’ve had this underlying feeling of being robbed of her infancy and early toddler stage. I like going to work and challenging myself, but I was scared that she was growing up so fast and I was never going to get that time back. It’s such a conflicting feeling because I wanted both, the career and the time with AB. In recent months that feeling has only intensified. So, with my work situation going awry, I’m going to enjoy this stay at home mom (SAHM) thing while I keep an eye out for my next marketing role. I think this is such a rare opportunity to experience a new slice of life – check out the other side of the fence and see how green the grass is over there! Most people do either one or the other, so I feel fortunate to get to experience both.

I would never guess that I would be a stay at home mom, that’s for sure. My mom was a full-time working mama throughout my childhood, so that was the example that was set for me. And yet here I am. Honestly, I don’t think I could be a SAHM only and not have a little side business, work part-time, or whatever, but I would need to figure that stuff out if this ever became a permanent situation. I do have a lot of passion projects I’d like to work on during this time, such as kick starting this blog and breathing new life into it. I’d love to learn how to cook, and just generally become a project manager of my own life. I want to become the ultimate task master. Working full time and then coming home to a baby just sucked the life right out of me. I felt like I had no energy to manage my personal affairs or help out around the house. Now, I have oodles of time to do this and I’m so excited to get started with all kinds of self-improvement projects!

Going forward, you can expect to see me chronicle my new adventures as a stay at home mom (however long it lasts); and my self-improvement/passion projects I plan to dive into. I’m also working on getting a new bloggy facelift in the form of a new blog design. Stay tuned on fun new stuff coming out of Life At Thirtysomething. You know the saying; “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” I’ve got to make it count!