A typical conversation with my son, while attempting to work from home–>
Son: “Mom, can you please Google what number the next SuperBowl is?”
Me: “Please stop interrupting me. I’m trying to work.”
Guilt gets the best of me so I quickly research it and discover the next SuperBowl is XLVII.
Son: “Do you know who invented cigarettes?”
Me: “Stop bothering me… I can’t work!”
My thoughts: “Crap, I better find out why he wants to know this.”
Me: “In 1743 an English beggar named Horrey Thornfield invented the first cigarette. Why? Are you planning on smoking?”
Son: “No, just curious.”
Son: “Do you know how puppies can recognize their mom?”
Me: “You’ve got to STOP BOTHERING ME or my clients are not going to be very happy. Go somewhere else and play.”
Son: “I’d rather play with you.”
Me: “When I was a kid, my mother didn’t play with me. I entertained myself. I didn’t go around bothering my mom.”
Son: “When you were a kid, you only had 3 black and white channels on TV… so things must not have been that great back then. Times have changed and some day you’re going to wish I was around to bother you, but I’ll be gone.”
Slam! (sound of laptop closing)
Me: “So, what do you want to play?”
Out of the mouths of babes… kids really know how to put things into perspective. So we played for a while and then I went back to work uninterrupted and still managed to make my clients happy.
So how do we handle the mommy guilt and the work/life juggling act?
It’s called BOUNDARIES… boundaries, common sense and occasional acts of spontaneity because life happens and sometimes you just have to go with the flow.
As a wise Beatle once said, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
(Answer: Puppies recognize the heartbeat of their mother.)
