Working from home while minding two small children eventually took its toll on CLAIRE O'CONNELL, who discovered that she was human after all and needed to sleep the odd time
A MONTH ago I sent an e-mail to my main commissioning editors: please do not ask me to write any new articles.
For a freelance journalist, cutting off the incoming supply is a risky strategy. Okay, it’s career-defying. When you are hired per article, saying ‘no’ is seldom an option.
But I finally had to take the ‘n’ word out of retirement. Why? Because while I was writing about breakthroughs in improving health and quality of life, I was neglecting my own. And I was starting to suffer.
I work at home around two small children, one at school, one a toddler. Writing time is mainly at night while the kids sleep, but in order to have something to write about, I need to talk to people.
With no formal childcare, I rely on generous relatives to help out a couple of mornings a week. It means I can do phone interviews without Peppa Pig blaring from the TV in the background, or a child chewing on my knee and asking for a nappy change, a biscuit or a toy that he has just posted under the floorboards.
I was just about juggling it all, even though it frequently meant 2am bedtimes to keep to deadlines. Then the toddler started to drop his daytime nap – my regular whirlwind time for organising interviews, shooting off e-mails, possibly even chancing a rapid phone call – and I was sunk.
With more work loaded into the night, my bedtime crept to 3am, then 4am. But the morning alarm still sounded three hours later to get us up in time for the school run. The erosion of yet more sleep made me grumpy, negative and downright impossible to live with.
At the start of the year my stress levels hit the roof. I was a bizarre melange of adrenalin-fuelled anxiety mashed with damp, foggy depression. I couldn’t even stand being in my own skin.
Writing was no longer a joy. It was a pain. My fingers, which usually danced across the laptop keyboard, now dragged themselves around as their instructions dried up: my brain went blank. Every night I thought I would rather chew glass than sit and write, but there were deadlines burning, they had to be met no matter what.
I started walking in the evenings, plugging into an audiobook while leaving the kids jumping on their father after dinner. It was a transient relief, but it was time in which my newspaper work wasn’t getting done. My stomach felt permanently knotted like a pretzel.
I downloaded an article about “burnout” from Scientific American Mind, and listened raptly to the narration as I walked. It listed traits that had become all too familiar: denial, isolation, moodiness, exhaustion. Had they been peering in my window?
“Be realistic, I’m still lucky to have an income,” I thought sternly, slipping into that recession mentality where beggars can’t be choosers. We had just finished work on the house and my earnings were more necessary than ever to pay off the bills.
But eventually, driven half to despair by years of short-changing myself on sleep and downtime, I had to call a halt.
My to-do list of articles teetered higher than my ironing pile (and that’s saying something). The kids were well looked after, but our house was grubby and infested with mounds of papers, books and toys, not to mention the leftover building detritus. It was getting embarrassing.
Being in constant fire-fighting mode, crisis managing accordion-like scrunches of back-to-back deadlines had made my situation unsustainable. I was indeed burning out.
Sending that e-mail late one ragged Sunday night – no new stories please – was all at once terrifying and liberating. Within a week I was almost deadline free, apart from a regular slot on the science page that needed no interviews.
I went into freefall and instantly fell asleep. As soon as the kids conked out, so did I. Like a desiccated sponge, my body seemed to absorb every second of slumber, drawing it in from miles.
When I woke I still had surges of panic: what if editors didn’t want me back? How about that story idea that flashed into my mind – would someone else cover it, and if so would they plough across my carefully nurtured patch and undo years of study, contacts and relationship-building with editors?
“Stick to your guns,” my husband advised.
I did. But it was hard, sitting on my hands instead of getting on the phone and jumping back into the gleeful satisfaction of chasing fresh ideas, catching the bylines and building up the salary.
A month on, I have eased back into it, revived many shelved stories and cleared some of the to-do list (and the ironing). Most nights I stop working by 1am, so I no longer look a century old, and my kids don’t need to run for cover in the morning.
Healthwise, I’m weaning off the habitual midnight carbs that once fuelled my all-nighters and I’m still out walking most evenings.
And I have once again opened the door for new business. But until the toddler goes to pre-school next year, I won’t be taking on too much.
Many people recoil when I tell them of my scaled-back strategy. What? Turn down work in a recession? Are you mad?
“No,” I reply. “Not any more.”