In July the summer holiday stretched before us \u2013 6 weeks of sunshine and I only had 50% of my planned working time blocked out for contract work. Perfect. I had all sorts of plans. And yet somehow pretty much spectacularly failed at them all. What happened and why didn\u2019t the school summer holiday turn out to be my answer to cracking my to do list?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Top of my to do list was more time with my son, who finished his first year of school, with trips out, film afternoons and quality Lego time. Next up was doing lots of wellbeing things after a stressful few months like catch up coffees, lunch with friends, morning yoga and daytime runs. And lastly was finally cracking through that bonus section of my to do list, you know the one that normally doesn\u2019t quite make it to the top \u2013 the ones with the great ideas that need thinking about and developing and some business admin that isn\u2019t quite essential but would be really helpful to sort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought this was the perfect time because my work commitments were so much less. However in hindsight, I made a bit of an error when I agreed to running the 1.5 days a week of my current contract as three half days. It was the charity\u2019s preference, and a set up they\u2019d had with someone else previously that had worked well. I knew it wasn\u2019t my preference but so early in (and grateful for the work), I just didn\u2019t consider negotiating that one. It would be fine, I thought, as it\u2019s only 4 hours a day so worst case scenario I could get some hours in really early and Lego\/Netflix could help fill the rest ’til I was done. And covering 4 hours is a hell of a lot easier than covering the 10 hour days I\u2019d recently been doing while employed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I found, though, was that by spreading out the hours across the week, it really ate into our time together. Bulking them together into one main day where childcare had to be covered (via my husband, clubs or family\/friends) I think actually would have given us a lot more flexibility with the rest of the week. Throughout the contract I agreed this change a couple of times and definitely appreciated the quality downtime\/ability to focus on other things across the week. So much so, I\u2019m considering negotiating this for the remainder of the contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bottom line is that school holidays just aren\u2019t compatible with work. You\u2019re suddenly looking at a really long stretch of time with nothing for at least one of your kids to do. Term time jobs are few and far between (and the financial compromise in reduced pay must be an absolute kicker) so most people are stuck with a time-honoured tradition of bodging it. Piecing together a mixture of annual time (or in self-employed cases, unpaid leave), bartering hours with your partner between who can work that morning\/afternoon and who has to compromise their day by working first thing, evenings or weekends. Another cruel lesson is that it isn\u2019t 6 weeks, for us it was actually 7 with inset days \u2013 33 days to cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most holiday clubs only take 5 year olds and over (meaning our youngest has to stay in eye-wateringly expensive all-year round nursery), and that the standard days are 9.30am \u2013 3pm, even shorter than a standard school day. So, all those lovely to-do items, even if you\u2019re paying for holiday care, are suddenly crammed into an even shorter period than normal. We also found out that most clubs don\u2019t run on the first or last week of the holidays. No idea why. But since we randomly picked to go away in the second week of the holidays, we unknowingly forfeited a week\u2019s worth of childcare. Now we are really lucky that school does a holiday club, and its one our son likes. It\u2019s walkable and it does an extended day of 8.30am \u2013 5.30pm but it\u2019s at a cost premium. If we\u2019d paid for 5 days a week across the holidays, it would have come in at over \u00a31,100 for the whole school holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were so lucky that we both have part-time jobs at the moment and ones where we\u2019ve got the flexibility (mostly) to shift our hours, including doing some at unsocial times to make sure we still cover our responsibilities. We were both able, for the most part, to work at home which means the childcare bodging was a lot more straightforward, like being able to start your day while cartoons handle the entertainment before a holiday club kicks in, and being able to walk to clubs and not losing too much time on \u201ccommuting\u201d themselves or you. We also had one morning where our son went into work with my husband, stocked up on snacks, a charged tablet with headphones and ton of Lego. I don\u2019t know how many employers would allow that. But for that one morning, it was a lifesaver. Of the very few benefits to come out of a global pandemic, I think work flexibility and the acknowledgement that work and life sometimes inevitably overlap is definitely one of them. At the moment, in this immediate aftermath of the pandemic, it\u2019s still okay for a lot of organisations to default to online meetings and it\u2019s just about okay if your child wanders into a meeting\u2026 but what did people do before pandemic \u2013 when the default was being in the office with much more separation between work and \u201clife\u201d? I honestly don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the biggest changes to get used to is that time out isn\u2019t paid when you\u2019re self-employed. Also, that it\u2019s sometimes less okay that the work stops when you’re away before its much more of a transaction that you\u2019re being paid X to reliably deliver Y. The reality is you need to lump the lack of pay for that period (and make sure you\u2019re accounting for that in your hourly\/day rate elsewhere) and agree what happens to the work while you\u2019re out. For my husband it has involved taking a laptop on holiday to occasionally keep on top of the absolute essentials that no-one else could cover. I was incredibly lucky this year that the charity I\u2019m with had their budget for me already set, so we agreed I\u2019d bump up my hours in the week before and after my week off to keep the work going. Financially fantastic but it did have a significant knock-on effect for my time to other things in the week either side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whatever you do over the summer holidays, whether it\u2019s lots of work, or some work, it also doesn\u2019t really take away from the parent-guilt when your child wants to be with you. The wails of \u201cbut it\u2019s the weekend\u201d when they realise you\u2019re working, because they don\u2019t quite understand that you had to take Thursday out to look after them and that work has to be done somewhere doesn\u2019t get easier. Or when they simply don\u2019t fancy the amazing holiday club you\u2019ve researched, paid for and organised, but the hard truth is, they have to go. If you\u2019ve got work commitments that pay the bills, it\u2019s essential. We only tried a small amount of our oldest being in the house while I worked, and it was enough to know that it isn\u2019t reliable focused time and the risk of being interrupted to have their boredom announced, snack requests issued or worst of all bathroom-related help requested is seriously high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So my to-list continues, and all those exciting development ideas remain just ideas. I did manage some fantastic days out with our son (as did his dad) and a family holiday, while keeping my current charity client happy, as well the client I\u2019m about to start with. Somehow, in the midst of the chaos, I also managed to put in two small proposals for work opportunities I’d love to do, with an eye on taking on more hours now school is starting back. And we learnt some seriously useful things that\u2019ll be a huge help for next year\u2019s summer holiday. So huge hats off to everyone who’s years into this balancing yet, I’m not sure it ever gets too much easier. And, note to self to significantly lower everyone’s expectations about what can be achieved next summer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In July the summer holiday stretched before us \u2013 6 weeks of sunshine and I only had 50% of my planned working time blocked out for contract work. Perfect. I had all sorts of plans. And yet somehow pretty much spectacularly failed at them all. What happened and why didn\u2019t the school summer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28],"tags":[13,11,15,12,21,25,10],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-productivity","tag-charity","tag-consultant","tag-founder","tag-freelance","tag-non-profit","tag-self-employment","tag-start-up-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t