Being a work at home mom has its challenges and drawbacks, but for the most part, it’s really the best job I’ve ever had. Here are my top ten reasons why being a WAHM is awesome!

10. I can load & start the dishwasher on my morning break
 9. I can easily work “overtime” after the kid goes to bed
 8. If a procedure or policy isn’t working, I can change it without going through any red tape
 7. My watercooler is Twitter (Shout out to my Twitter Peeps!)
 6. I can listen for the mailman, then go get any checks from clients out of the mailbox, take them to the bank, run a few errands and get lunch to bring home
 5. I can do my work at Starbucks for a few hours if I want to
 4. I can start dinner cooking on my afternoon break
 3. I can go pick up my son if he is sick at school without apologizing and genuflecting all over the place to boss & co-workers, then just make up the work later that day
 2. I’m there to do my son’s homework with him the instant he gets home from school
 1. Including what would otherwise be commute time and times when he is off school for holidays, teacher days etc., I probably get to spend an average of 20 hours per week more with my son than I would if I worked full time in an office!

Those are some great reasons – my top 10. I really think this arrangement allows a much more even balance to work/family, something that women, especially, struggle with.

What are your reasons for why you love being a Work At Home Mom or why you would like to? Leave me a comment & let’s talk about it!

[ This is part 8 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

But I made it through that. My son started school, the large blog was launched, and more business was pouring in. I’ve had some very short periods of slowness with my business since then, but they are always short-lived, and I wind up with almost more business than I can handle very soon after every dry spell.

My very first client is still a regular client, as is the Seattle attorney who hired me to finish his web site. I have many regular clients and gain new ones all the time. My biggest client ever is now working with me on business development, and there are some exciting changes in the wings for Blog Solace in the very near future!

What is amazing to me is that, yes, I worked and educated myself and was prepared for this opportunity. But currently owning a successful back end web development business would not have been possible if I hadn’t been *forced* into it. If Kindercare had been the right place for my child, or if adequate care for him had ever appeared, I would be an Administrative Assistant right now.

Instead, I’m a Work At Home Mom who owns her own small business, and the future is bright! That’s how I accidentally started my own business and became a WAHM. I guess it’s a lesson in making sure you never stop learning and being open to change, following your passion, recognizing opportunity when it knocks, and following through on it no matter how hard it is.

Never give up!

[ This is part 7 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

So I decided that even as much as I hated the idea, the time had come to put my son in daycare and go back to seeking an Administrative Assistant position. I knew I was over-qualified for that position by then, but that I would never get a web development job without a college degree.

So I took $200 and took my son to Kindercare on a Monday morning and started my job search in earnest. I went back to Kindercare to pick him up on Monday evening, and, with apologies, they handed me back my check and told me they could not keep my son. It was not safe for him there, and he needed to be in a specialized environment.

I spent a huge amount of time after that attempting to get specialized care for him that I could afford, trying to get help from the state (he was diagnosed as Developmentally Disabled when he was 4) and hitting brick walls every time I sought out help.

Time was passing and rent and car payments were coming due. I had to borrow money from my sister, and right when I was to the point of desperation, a large job rolled in. I decided to work as hard as I could and get through the summer, and when school started I would be able to concentrate even more on getting new business.

Taking care of my son while trying to work on my business was not very effective and beyond frustrating. But it was my only option. I fought through having almost no money, caring for a constantly-interrupting and behaviorally challenged child and trying to develop a large corporate blog from the ground up all at the same time. I’d say August of 2008 was probably the hardest time in my life.

AND FINALLY, SUCCESS . . . [READ PART 8] . . .

[ This is part 6 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

That was in early February of 2008. Over the next month or month and a half, I scoured all the cities on Craig’s List looking for WordPress gigs in the Computer Gigs section on Craig’s List. And they were out there! An advanced theme customization for a stocks web site built on WordPress in Austin TX, some layout changes and customized widgets on a sustainable gardening blog in Washington D.C., a real estate blog in Florida… The list goes on.

Lot’s of small to medium sized jobs paying me actual money to do something I absoloutely *love* to do! I was in heaven! During a bit of a lag in business, I posted my first ad in the Computer Services section in Seattle and got my first really big job. It wasn’t even WordPress. It was finishing a web design that some designer had desserted for the owner of a Seattle Law Firm. That job drove home that this business was real, multi-faceted, was something that I could do and was booming.

This was great for a few months, but then a very slow time hit. As in hit the wall! Business just stopped for a few weeks, and I was scared. My instinct was to ride it out, but with a young child counting on me, I felt the responsible thing to do was to go back to work.

FORCED TO RIDE OUT THE SLOW TIMES [READ PART 7]. . .

[ This is part 5 of an 8-part article - Read Part 1... ]

So as I did all of this as a hobby, something else was happening concurrently with that. I lost my job as an Administrative Assistant and my developmentally disabled son was becoming harder and harder to deal with. I was not able to find a new job for about 6 months after losing that Admin job. I was on food stamps and unemployment and absolutely desperate.

So I started poring over Craig’s List ads in every city in the country looking for *something* that I could do to make a few extra dollars. I was looking in the Computer Gigs section for something like data entry or something like that – I didn’t know what I would find. I just needed to find *something* I could do and do quick and get a paycheck.

Low and behold in the San Francisco Computer Gigs section of Craig’s List section I found an ad asking for “WordPress Help.” What??? WordPress? Hey, I can do that! The pay was listed as “A Little Moo-La For Your Latte.” I didn’t know what that would equal exactly, but it was more than I had at the moment, so why not give it a shot?

The need, as it turned out, was for a customized widget for the sidebar on a blog for car enthusiasts. The pay wound up being approximately $20. I had done that particular thing before, but there was something unique about the theme this site was using that made it a bit of a challenge. So I think I spent about 3 hours earning that $20, but I didn’t care. I was ecstatic! I had $20 in my PayPal account headed towards my bank, I had learned something new about WordPress, and I had hope! An opportunity was knocking, and I wasn’t about let it go by.

TURNS OUT THE NEEED WAS OUT THERE JUST WAITING FOR ME TO FILL IT [READ PART 6]. . .

Hello, welcome to the launch of my blog!  For awhile I had a website here attempting a Web Design service, but I soon learned that straight Web Design was not my thing.  WordPress and backend administration is my thing!  A much different animal.  I am attempting to improve and hone my web design skills, but I don’t think they will ever truly be my forte.  WordPress will always be my love!

This blog will probably reflect most areas of my online life, mostly professional.  The line gets blurred a lot, though, for a lot of reasons.  Clients often become friends, social networking is very social even though it’s used mostly for business networking, and I’m a “Work At Home Mom.”  There will probably be a lot of issues/strategies I can address here that will be interesting to other Mothers attempting to make a go of working from home, so that might be the subject of some of my blog posts.

By way of short introduction, if you don’t know me already, I’m a 41-Year-Old divorced mother of a Developmentally Disabled six-year-old boy and am running my own business (Blog Solace) and living in Bothell, Washington near Seattle.

My business is described as being “expert WordPress help” and I use self-taught, hand-coding skills to manipulate the CSS, XHTML and PHP within the WordPress platform to optimize both static and blogging WordPress sites.  I have vast knowledge of the ins and outs of WordPress and keep up-to-date on its advances, plug-ins, capabilities, updates, etc.  It truly is a passion, and it is not just my job, it’s my hobby.  I truly love what I do.

Please watch this space for my thoughts, insights, queries, and more on WordPress, life online, Twitter, social networking, social marketing (it’s just an interest, I’m no expert), SEO tips (again, not an expert, but I probably know more than the average joe), WAHM posts, and whatever I feel would fit into this space!