The First Entry

I have given myself until Friday, April 12, 2013, to write my blog entry.  It is now April 11, 2013.  My self-imposed deadline is coming up.  I am working against a little voice in my head is insisting that this will not be nearly as perfect as a first blog entry needs to be.  I am feeling the fear and doing it anyway.  (Go Susan Jeffers!)  The little voice is also telling me that I need to eloquently explain myself and justify all the reasons for putting something out in the Internet.  ('Cause, you know, the rest of the Web content is so refined and polished.)  What I am also feeling is that I need to start.  Perhaps I may find an audience, perhaps not, but I feel that what I have to say matters.  That feeling is stronger than the nagging voice of insecurity.

I am calling this blog 'Work and Be' because that is what I am interested in discussing.

I am a wife and a mother.  I am also a professional with untapped potential.  I stayed home with my daughter for a year after she was born and I was very happy to go back to work.  I knew then that I could not be a stay-at-home mom.  I crave interaction with adults (with jokes and timely expletives, if necessary).  I also want to grow professionally.  That realization occurred a year and a half ago.  What I see myself doing now is holding out on advancing my career.  My work is interesting at times, but I am overqualified and know that I can do a lot more.  At the same time, I am hesitant to look for challenging opportunities because I am wary of the time commitment.  I do not want to be a Worker Bee.  I want to Work and Be. I want to Be there for my husband and my daughter.  I want to Be there during the formative years of my child when she needs me so much.  I also want to Work and contribute to society.  I want to use my big brains - my two masters degrees should not be getting dusty.  I want to Be what Sheryl Sandberg calls "competent professional and happy mother - or even happy professional and competent mother".  I believe it is possible.  I believe I can do that.  This blog is one of the vehicles to get me there.

Here I want to talk about ideas in Sandberg's awesome Lean In and in other empowering books that I'm discovering.  I want to talk about insecurities that are trying to drag me into inaction.  I think I'm not alone.  I want to talk about ideas that matter to working mothers.  I want to discuss exactly what lead to my decision to start writing.  I think it's interesting and I want to share it. (This is also an exercise in exorcising my perfectionism demon.  It's lurking over my shoulder as I type, just so you know.)

So here it is - first blog post.  I did it.  Thank you for reading.  Let's see where this goes - I am excited!

My warmest regards,
Irena