2014 is going to be a life changing year.
In 2009 I set up my own accountancy business alongside working full time. It started slowly as MissB arrived at the end of 2009 followed by MasterB in early 2011.
All the time I was pregnant or coping with newborn babies, I was slowly building up my business in the background. When MasterB was in neonatal , I would sit with my laptop next to his cot working away on company accounts whilst he was sleeping.
It's been a tough few years, I admit I have struggled. The last 15 months have been particularly hard as I have been holding down a temporary full time job alongside my business.
A typical day for me has looked like this for the last 15 months:
05:45 Alarm goes off, jump in shower and get myself ready for work
06:30 Wake up children, give them breakfast and get them ready for nursery
07:00 Hand over kids to hubby as I set off on an hours drive to full time job
08:00 - 16:00 Work
17:00 Get home, cook or collect kids from nursery
17:30 Family time, have dinner, baths, milk ...
19:00 Get the kids to bed
19:30 Open laptop and work on business until around midnight most nights
0:00 Get to bed (hoping that I don't have to get up with MasterB during the night as he still wakes around 30% of nights).
To say I am exhausted is an understatement; to say I am functioning on willpower alone would pretty much sum up how I cope.
But things are changing! You see all the hard work is paying off. My business has grown and continues to grow.
In fact, we decided that 2014 is the year where I can now leave the rat race for good and focus solely on building my business and working from home. So at the start of this month, I handed in my notice and as of January I will be purely working for my own business again.
I am excited beyond belief, terrified of leaving behind the security of a regular monthly income and a thousand different emotions in between.
I love my business. I have worked bloody hard at building it up to this point and I have some fabulous clients who I have seen grow alongside me. I could happily spend all night working on my client work as I enjoy it so much but in 2014 I'm hoping it will become even more enjoyable as I can focus on this work during the daylight hours and actually have some time for me as a person too!
Not forgetting that life will improve for all my family having me based from home. The kids can have a bit of a lie in before nursery, I will be able to work around school runs and poorly children without having to worry about the damage it is doing to my career as the only person I will need to answer to is myself. And hopefully my kids will find their mummy is a lot happier and less tired at the weekends when it comes to spending time with them.
I live in Durham with my wonderful husband MrB and my beautiful daughter MissB and the most recent addition to our family MasterB. We are a family of vegetarians and both our children are being brought up as vegetarian until they are old enough to choose for themselves.
Blogs at: Knees Up Mother Brown
Twitter: @Dawnie_Brown