Mummascribbles – Job hunting for the end of maternity leave – Mummascribbles

This is a collaborative post

I don’t even like to think about it but the reality is, I need to work. I don’t need to work full time but I do need a steady income to guarantee that we can pay the bills. I know I wrote in my 2017 blogging goals that my big aim is to not return to the office, but I need to have a back up in place should I fail in my task to make enough money from home. January has been pretty good in terms of my financial goal but I know that it is not guaranteed every month. With blogging, one month your inbox will be buzzing and the next it’s like everyone has forgotten that you exist!

For the last ten years I have been organising events. I was really lucky that I even got into it as a career because I almost didn’t apply for it. I was working in the membership department of a company and the manager of the events team told me to apply for the event coordinator job.

I didn’t!

Then I regretted it, my mum gave me a kick up the booty and the day after the deadline, I asked if I could still apply. They let me, I interviewed and I got the job.

I spent several years working hard and proving myself in order for the big promotion to Conference Organiser but when I returned after having Zach, I found the length of time that I had to be away from home really hard and so found another job as an Event Manager, mostly organising one day events, which is the role that I am due back to at the end of maternity leave. 

The quandry that I find myself in is what I want to do. There are not many jobs in the events world that are part time. Neither is the job very flexible and it is definitely not family friendly. 

But – I love it! 

Even though the time away from home is hard, I have got to visit some really gorgeous venues like those of One Events. I have got to eat some fabulous dinners, stay in some swanky hotels and attend some fancy gala dinners. Heck, I even went to San Francisco for ten days. 

So the question that I keep asking myself is, do I want to give all of that up? If this blogging thing doesn’t work out, if I don’t manage to crack the world of social media management, do I want to be doing a different job, a more mundane job?

I know that I want to be that mum at the school gates. I don’t want someone else picking my boys up, walking them home and chatting to them about their day, cooking their tea and helping them do their homework. But if I can’t be the one that does that, then do I want to give up the career that I worked so hard at, for another part time job that doesn’t give me the same satisfaction and still doesn’t enable me to do the school run? 

With my maternity pay due to finish at the end of May, I am regularly browsing the job market to see what’s out there. I pretty much know that there is no hope of my current job being reduced to part time hours and it is such a long commute, I don’t even know how I would juggle it all.

I have an awful lot to think about, a lot to plan and a lot to hope for. 

Tags: career, Parenting, Work, working mummy