I’ll be riffing a bit today about a subject discussed on this Paul Millerd’s newsletter issue, where he’s speaking about the default path and how people leaving full-time jobs are often met with suspicions:

Boundless by Paul Millerd

Q&A Mailbag | #207

December 11th, 2022: Greetings from Austin. Covid kicked my ass this week and nothing was done. I started feeling better today and wanted to get to write and ship some things I’ve had in backlog, namely a few questions people sent me that I said I’d respond to via email. I’m also hoping to ship some half-baked essays I’ve had sitting around all year in…

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4 months ago · 13 likes · 4 comments · Paul Millerd

My official move to part-time work is officially pretty recent since it was “maternity leave” with a bit of extra work on the side for almost a year, but I did not have any suspicion or doubt thrown at me.

Maybe it’s because I’m a woman? Even if I’m the main breadwinner, at a first glace I look like a stay-at-home mom. I guess I’m a part-time stay-at-home mom if I work half the time? In any case, the stereotypes are still strong and it’s easier to default to this instead of “makes decent money typing shit on a computer”.

Another thing is that a lot of my older woman friends also had to care for children when they were younger, so taking time off when babies are young was more of a rule than an exception. It’s recent in the big scheme of things to have both parents focusing on their career and full-time work while having young children.

I was even surprised at how little push back I had socially when I announced I was not coming back after my leave. Surprised, but glad. Everybody was very nice, and people understand that a new mom wants more time to care for her family and go off the traditional career path for a while.

It’s a shame that other endeavours don’t get the same understanding as building a family. There are many other legitimate projects and obligations, and nobody should be shamed for taking time to pursue something interesting.

I don’t regret working full-time for many years, but leaving corporate work behind does open your eyes to everything else that is out there. I’m curious to see what projects the next years will bring now that I’m seeing things differently!

Projects updates

I finished up a fancier site for selling my socks at https://manibassocks.com, so I’ll be looking soon at pointing paid traffic to it and doing a few experiments. It’s a WordPress WooCommerce site: I’m pretty familiar with the platform so I was able to get it out fast. I also added it to my Cloudways account, so no extra cost!

I had help from ChatGPT for the About page and product description since they are pretty formulatic and I find it hard to praise my own things. It’s surprisingly good if you’re ready to do some editing to remove the parts that are too cringe, make it flow better and add personal anecdotes.

Feeling of the week

It’s true when they say that having a child changes you in ways you can’t predict.

Ways I can help you

• Get your cozy, made-to-fit wool socks at my brand new shop

  https://manibassocks.com.

• For my Canadian friends, I have a nano business selling seeds from my garden at https://sentiersperdus.net/en. Sorry, due to various phytosanitary concerns, it’s hard to ship those outside Canada

• Don’t hesitate to reply to this email if you want to chat about software development, or show me baby pictures.

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