The return
What does ‘returning to work’ look like, when your work is your home and your colleagues are non-existent?
I’m cracking open the door to the worldrld of the working after having babe #2. Down go the tabs with BLW inspo (iykyk), rash comparison images and age appropriate play ideas. Dusting off my LinkedIn, Slack and Miro passwords.
When you work for yourself, parental leave feels yawningly open-ended. There’s a freedom to focus on your family completely; there’s no return date to dread, no looming approach of meetings-that-could-be-emails, no wayward projects or mat-leave replacements to fear.
But there are challenges. There’s an abyss where ‘work’ was in my mind.
My work is project based, so there is nothing ‘in flight’ I can cling to. Any new projects must be created, clients must be won. Which feels, honestly, frightening.
I am lucky enough to work from home. We’ve recently moved, so there’s no familiar space of my own to return to. A desk or chair that might jog my memory of what it is I used to do all day. (Speaking of, one hour sat in one place feels like an ungodly amount of time. The 8hr+ work day is a joke).
When you work for yourself, there are no work besties to hug, no office rumours to catch up on, no favourite baristas at the work local to visit, no one that looks me in the eye and sees ‘my other self.’ There’s no easy way to get back to her - the version of me that converses with adults, that thinks Mondays feel different to Fridays, that trades time for money, not stories and hugs.
So - this is my slightly Linkedin-inappropriate return. Gotta start somewhere right?
Maybe soon I’ll be weighing in on whether distinctive assets are over-hyped (they are), borrowing Ritson’s quotes to make my own points (again) or celebrating the overdue pivot from performance to brand marketing. But not today.
Officially taking on meaty brand strategy projects from April. Available for smaller scale research + marketing support from Feb. Which is tomorrow apparently.
Also love to hear any returning-to-work advice / solidarity x
