I have two jobs: I am a stay at home mom and fine art photographer. The time devoted to my jobs is split 95/5. If percentages could go higher than 100 and be still be possible it would probably be more like 350/10. 350 going to stay at home mom. It's hard being a stay at home mom. There are all sort of stipulations and shamers who say that SAHMs have it easy, sitting around all day watching television and eating sweets. We, of course, know that is completely untrue and won't get into that debate here. However you parent and however you spend your time, being any kind of mom is hard. It's the job that you never get a vacation from. Ever.
All of the "mom-to-be" books out there say the number one thing to do as a mom is to be sure to take time for yourself, but when you're going from one child crisis to the next, it's hard to find that time. If you are lucky like me you have The Support, aka The Husband, who gets on your case if you don't take that half hour to finish up an edit on an image and will strap you to your chair in front of the computer to make sure you do it. Who watches the kids every other Saturday morning so you can go out and shoot images so you have stuff to work on over the next couple weeks during your meager "me time." I am very, very lucky to have the husband I do. But I think some times the husband gets largely forgotten.
We think that because the husband/partner/father gets to leave for eight hours every day to go to work that that is their respite from the chaos that is raising a family, that somehow a full time job is less grueling than what us SAHM do. The fact of the matter is they never get a vacation either. During their eight hours at their paid job they worry about us at home on top of worrying about their performances and deadlines working for someone else. And the moment they step foot into the house they go straight in to their second job: father, aka "employee to tiny, helpless beings." When are our supporters supposed to get their "me time?"
It's because of this that my husband and I have set up a rotation on Saturdays. Every other Saturday I get to go on my shoots and he gets to go out for a few hours to work on whatever he needs to feel fulfilled and get recharged. Sometimes it's nice when your "me times" can cross and you work on projects together, such as in the image above after a photo shoot I got to do with my handsome husband which turned into this image here. This weekend would be his to do as he pleases, but we have to a two hour drive out to central Washington to pick up my photograph that's been showing at a museum, and he is willingly giving up his Saturday so we can do that. The following weekend we are moving into our first home and so he won't have his time then either. He sacrifices his time a lot for me and for our family.
Our supporters are so great at making sure we get our time to fulfill our creative needs, go out and visit galleries, network with other artists and give us a break from taking care of children all day. It's important to make sure we support our supporters and give them some time as well.