Midlife Crisis or Working Mother's Guilt?

This week I am going to talk about why I started this business...

It all started for me when I went to a spa day for my birthday (35 since you ask) with my beautiful friend Angharad (she really is).  I hadn't managed to get our treatments booked in at the same time so we actually spent a couple of hours on our own.  I was supposed to be relaxing, but in that semi-dark relaxation room all that happened is that I started to take stock.

So there I was at 35 with 2 lovely children and a great husband, and I had worked hard to get where I was at work (Banking).  I did feel extremely lucky but I had to drive a 100 mile round trip every day to get to work, we were heavily reliant on my husband's family to pick up the kids when I got stuck on the motorway/had an important project, and I felt like "angry mum" every morning getting them ready for school and out of the door for 8am. So classic working mother's guilt you might think, and that's the conclusion I came to.

But now I realise I was also bored.  So bored I could feel little silent screams building up inside me.  And tired.  Every day I battled with what Mike Pegg (The Strength Foundation) calls "pot drillers" - people who drill little holes in the bottom of your pot of energy.  And my daughter kept saying to me "why can't you work at my school like all the other mums?".  Whilst I knew one day that she would be proud of her working mum, as I am of mine, work just didn't feel worth the struggle any more.

So I started reading books on entrepreneurs, mostly woman's books really, although I'm not sure that was 100% deliberate.  I also read "How to Start A Business From Your Kitchen Table" by the wonderful women who founded "Not On The High Street".  I thought "I can do this", but I needed an idea.

It came to me in the Islington Hilton at midnight - I remember emailing my mum "I've got it".  All thanks to my nephew Javi, for whom I struggled to find a Spanish speaking toy for his birthday.  I think I've found a really good niche with bilingual toys, and I love to hear feedback from my customers when they tell me they wish they could buy all my stuff in their language, or that the service is good.  I know there are times coming where things will go wrong, but that's life and I can cope.

So, back to my children.  I am now doing contracting in the day as well as building the business at night, so you may think that I am defeating the object of having less pressure, but because I now get a couple of days working from home, and I get to take the kids to school, things are already better.  And I am no longer angry mum.

People at my work told me I was having a mid-life crisis and it would blow over, HR put my reasons for leaving as "work life balance", family told me I was mad to give up a good job.  I think all these things are probably all true, but you only live once, my children will only be young once, and I am seizing the day.


x

Next week - the first lot of stock arrives.....

www.rachelstoyshop.co.uk