To be a SAHM (Stay at Home Mum)? I don't think so.

If there is ever one thing that has me worried, it's the maternity leave. For a long time, I thought of shortening my maternity leave to go back to work for I am not sure if I can face my little one the whole day. Many times, when I mention this, most people will look at me in shock with the expression "I can't believe she even thought of this" etched on their faces. They will then try to dissuade me and tell me that I will have a lot of things to do. I stubbornly persisted in my thinking and declared "I'm a workaholic! My mind is so active! I will need distractions than just facing the baby 24 hours a day!!" Newly-become mothers also told of how tiring they are but needed distractions as well because they felt bored by the 2nd month!

Then I started reading up about child development. Oh my... I didn't realise that it's best to stay home to be with your kid the whole day if you really want to fully develop and bond with him/her. The more I read, the more fear I felt. All books kept talking about the first three years of the baby's life and how it is possible to rear a Harvard student by then.

Trying to juggle a Work-Life Balance

A work-life balance takes a lot of work. When I wasn't pregnant,  the words held little meaning for me. All day was just work , work , work.  The fact that I am a teacher further complicates matters as - we all know - being a teacher is almost like a 24 hour job.  The moment I reach home, I work. On weekends, I have to return for CCAs. On weekends, I would be thinking of assignments to mark or new lesson plans to do up. At night, I would be thinking of new ideas of how to engage students.

It would get so bad at times that my husband would argue with me and whine that I was ignoring him and I would just brush it aside as one of his petty complaints. It was... never ending! Here are some examples of letters written to the Straits Times forum about our workload:

Supermom Wannabe - Organisation

Our Multiple Roles

Nowadays, we are being pulled at all areas in our various roles and these roles can be extremely overwhelming and stressful in the long run. At home, I  will be a mom, a wife, a daughter-in-law and a daughter. At work, I will be a teacher, mentor, events coordinator etc.   have never been much of an organizer and i always ended up frustrated when I need to search for items to use desperately. I also ended up buying repeated items because I could not find the stuff that I have used earlier - especially in a time crunch. Soon, I found that in my line of work; your passion for your career will die out quickly if there is lack of proper time management and organization.  Soon I began to realise that if I don't start learning this skill soon, a recurring vision of heading for a mental breakdown would start to appear before me. I have to start soon but slowly. First, I started to read up of tips on decluttering my life and found the tips below especially useful for me.