You don’t. Since my daughter was born 2 weeks ago, I managed to write one post. Just one and it wasn’t a difficult one either. When you make a living as a blogger, that is worrying. Even staying active at social media was a challenge these days. If you are struggling concentrating to your work when your newborn baby comes home, you are not alone. I’ve been there, and still doing that.
Obviously I expected a slowdown in my work schedule. I even accepted the fact that for some days I wouldn’t work at all! Should you have an entrepreneurial spirit, you understand how mind-blowingly unacceptable that would be.
Of course, becoming a dad is a great thing. I wanted to spend a lot of time with my baby during her first days at home. And I did and still do, but there comes a time that you need to find a balance between family time and work. After all, bills haven’t stopped coming in.
Working from home though complicates things.
I don’t go out to work, as I suppose most of you do. I stay at home and work in my office. The office is a small room of a one-bedroom apartment. I am about 7 meters away from the bedroom where the baby sleeps. Or pretends to be sleeping to say the least. Fortunately, she only cries when it’s time for breast feeding. Which is the moment she wakes up!
You can imagine, how having a baby crying in your home when you try to work, is not the ideal working environment. Even more, a baby needs a hug, bath and diaper changing to name the most crucial needs of a newborn human being. My wife and I have decided to take care of all that by ourselves. No grandparents will get involved whatsoever, therefore we are avoiding their disapproving looks, judgmental remarks and 1980’s-originated suggestions.
That’s one side of that coin though. The other one is severe lack of sleep and failure to make whatever plan.
Working from home and taking care of your newborn baby with your spouse do not seem to get along. As a dad, I have to help bathe the baby, change her diaper and put her to sleep. As a blogger, I have to keep up with the news, find interesting stories to comment on, search for hot topics and decide what I will be writing about. That task may take an hour or more, yet it can be interrupted for changing a diaper.
The task that should not be interrupted is writing the article. I have to put my thoughts on paper, pick an eye-catching headline, come up with an image to accompany the article, do some SEO and finally share the post with the world. That last part is done efficiently since I moved over to Google+ and used Friends+Me service, which saves me a lot of time.
The rest though keeps me glued to the screen. Otherwise, each time I have to leave my office, I find myself re-reading my half-finished project from the beginning. That may double or triple the required time to finish the post. After 10 or more interruptions however, a blogger will lose his mood to finish the damn piece.
So, how do I work from home with my newborn baby in the room next door? I am still trying to figure it out, as this very article is my first attempt to make a comeback. If you have any suggestion, apart from renting a new office or moving to a bigger apartment, feel free to leave a comment.
