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As most of you are aware, I left my job to pursue Mommy Shorts full-time back in November. Since then I've had people ask me lots of questions… How is it going? What's it like working from home? What ever happened to your redesign? Can I come work for you?

I decided now was as good a time as any for an update.

1) "How is it going?"

It's good! Seriously, I could not be happier than I am working for myself.

I was having a conversation recently with someone about work life balance and I realized the whole key is being passionate about what you are doing when you are away from home. My friend is struggling because she feels like her whole life is spent either working or being with the kids giving her no time for herself. I realized my time for myself and my work have become one and the same. I feel very lucky about that.

2) "What's it like working from home?"

Probably the most common misconception about me quitting my job to focus on Mommy Shorts is that I am now somehow juggling both my children and my blog while working from home.

No. Not the case. I find working at home with small children impossible and I don't think I could ever turn my blog into a business while trying to figure out what Harlow wants to eat for lunch and wondering which Frozen character I'm supposed to be that day. (I don't speak for everyone. Just me.)

We have the same nanny we had while I was working at my old job (Hi Ruth! You are AWESOME!) and I work out of a tiny office (think: large closet) that I share with my party planning friend (and fellow working mom), Seri. It's about a fifteen minute walk from my apartment.

Did I say large closet? That's by NYC standards. It's probably the size of Beyonce's underwear drawer.

3) "So you didn't quit your job to spend more time with your kids?"

I do spend more time with my kids. Working for myself allows me to linger in the mornings, take Harlow to a doctor's appointment in the middle of the day or leave early because I want to watch Mazzy in ballet class. I am always home before 6pm to relieve our nanny (which was not always the case with the ad gig) and if I work late, I just do it after I put the kids to bed. The other key to work life balance is flexibility.

But the main reason I quit my job is because I see more potential in Mommy Shorts than I did in my advertising career. It was not to scale back. In a lot of ways, I work harder than ever before.

4) "What ever happened to the redesign?"

You thought a blog redesign would take a few weeks to a month at most, right? ME TOO! How wrong we both were. I started the redesign back in November and it's still very much a work in progress.

I've been working with a really great web design company but the first direction ended up feeling wrong to me and I pulled the plug. It was a beautiful design, but it wasn't Mommy Shorts. We are now refining the design to reflect more of my current site. Hopefully, it will feel different but in a good way.

For the record, I'm extremely nervous about launching the redesign. I really want everyone to like it. 

What's the ETA? I won't even venture a guess. After we are done with the design, we still have to migrate three years of content over to WordPress. But I will keep you guys updated on the progress.

5) "ARE YOU MAKING MONEY DOING THIS?"

I am! I've been working with someone to help me build proposals and pitch my blog to brands, who has helped me sell a lot of the sponsored content that I've been rolling out over the last few weeks.

6) "Are you worried you will lose readers with so much sponsored content?"

Nobody asked this question but it's one I think about all the time. Yes, I worry about this a lot. But that just means I must work harder to make the sponsored content as engaging as everything else you see on my blog. 

I'm trying to sell original ideas that fit right in with my current site— like getting Allstate to sponsor Monday Mornings and Olympus to sponsor #rewardyourselfie— as opposed to waiting for brands to come to me. I'm also being very choosy about who I work with. Mommy Shorts is not just a company; it's a representation of me, so I am never going to promote something I don't believe in. I turn offers down all the time if they are not products or brands I would recommend to my friends in real life.

I'm sure I'll say this and then tomorrow a company named Joe's Rip-Offs will offer me a million dollars to promote cheaply-made products in environmentally un-friendly packaging and I'll be like— FUCK YEAH!

But for now, my integrity is intact.