Working from home is a hard balance, children running through the office, home duties fall in line 1st.
Starting a start up is hard when you have 3 kids. Giving up a standard paycheck, security and benefits... Now that is a whole other story.
Many will tell you don't talk about the house when in the office and don't talk about work at the dinner table. I have never been good at separating the 2; the biggest sore spot for my business partner and husband.
But my business is intertwined in my real life. I eat, sleep, breath my business. I am a mom who is trying to kick it in the fashion world. Not an easy starting point, yet its easy to have role models like this to help. Today was the most obvious reality to me about how intertwined they both are.
We are working on a big event in NYC coming up. We were hit hard by the storms in Toronto, but today after coming back from a business pick up and grabbing the girls from school. My husband demands I rush inside from the car. As I am walking into the house I witness a waterfall, a disaster kind of waterfall in my living room. From the ceiling to the floor with a river flowing into the office. The dining room carpet sopping wet. It took everything inside me to contain myself as my daughters started freaking out.
Husband ran to find all the water valves in the house. Turned the water off and then continued to remove the wet drywall. Plaster covering my living room floor, water soaked insulation. It couldn't get worse, call the insurance. Wait don't call the insurance...
Now most of you would say why not call the insurance. Because we have a delivery to finish. We have work to do and our office is inside our home. Our workshop is divided from the basement to the shed. I need to be in this house doing work. I can't be sent out of our home til the insurance is settled, because no one else can do our work for us.
Now these are not living conditions, I don't recommend you do any of what I did; here is the only reason it worked for us... My husband is ridiculously handy.
It took over 8 hours, but he removed the potentially rotting drywall and insulation. Removed the busted copper pipe, used torches, drywall knives, fists (yeah no one said he does it gingerly,) a trip to Home Depot and I have water again. Fully replaced pipes that have been insulated. Perhaps he wouldn't be capable to have done it if he wasn't a master welder/solderer.
But in hindsight there was no option but to have a handy husband, my children get to wake up and wash their faces with warm water. That everything is business as usual (thank God) and we are unfazed by the waterfall that made itself at home.
And I learn a valuable lesson about my intertwining life. Get it done, find a way and make it happen. You can sit there and wallow in the misery of the situation but who does that help. I wanted to cry, I wanted to be an ostrich and stick my head in the ground. Call in the people to get me out of my situation. But instead... It wasn't an option when you want more, when you are aspiring for more. If I had taken the obvious route I might have lost everything I have worked so hard to build and establish.
I also learnt that I aspire to live somewhere where winter can't freeze a whole city over.
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