Heather says:

People new to Home Ec may wonder what this series is about. I started the Sunday Confessional a few years ago when I realized how it was way too easy to only share the best parts of life. Most of us tend to compare our personal, absolute worst with everyone else’s best foot forward. I started the Sunday Confessional not as a way to celebrate mediocrity or to encourage people to fail, but as a way to be honest about life. It’s never magazine perfect or tv tidy. We all have problems that aren’t fixed in thirty minutes and areas of our life that aren’t always perfectly staged for a photo shoot.

People get scared when their life isn’t measuring up to these false ideals. People write me emails, ashamed because they feel they aren’t good enough. I don’t want to contribute to that feeling. I want Home Ec 101 to be a resource no matter where you are on your journey to self-sufficiency and just as an FYI, perfect isn’t even on that map.

The way this works is I share something and then it’s your turn in the comments. It’s okay to be anonymous, just keep it family friendly.

So here goes:

The people who are close to me have been worried about me for a while. “You’re too stressed, Heather,” and yes, they’re right. You see, over the past five years Home Ec 101 slowly turned from a hobby into an actual job and what is slowly, so slowly, evolving into a career -this website isn’t all I do, but it is a hefty portion and the most public part of it. What those of you who don’t know me can’t see is I sweat the details, all of the details, all of the time. Was my tone too snarky? What if the community gets mad at me for for working with [Brand X]? I need to redo all the things right now! Oh no, I had a typo and no one told me. (Email me typo alerts, please, it’s kind of embarrassing to have them pointed out in the comments)

Some might say I’m a bit high strung.

Some might say I’m neurotic, but in a cute and endearing way not the scary way, of course -at least that’s what I hope.

Throw in some stress on a personal level and it really has gotten to be a bit too much.

So what does a work-a-holic do when they need a break from their brain? They start interviewing for a low-stress, part-time gig. (And then they bawl alone in a parking lot because they are “good enough” on the Internet to work with nationally recognized brands, but feel they just bombed an interview for a serving gig.) And then a couple days later they realize they just might be a bit hard on themselves when they find they actually landed said gig.

Starting in a couple of weeks, I’ll be working, very part-time, in my favorite Irish pub. (Some people I know have said I got the gig because I’m a redhead; I would hope it had more to do with the nearly ten years of F&B experience I had prior to having kids.)

Some of you are wondering how a serving gig could possibly be low-stress.

Let’s just say I need some “done” in my life.

As a mother, there’s never “done,” as a home owner, there is ALWAYS stuff I should be doing. As someone who is self-employed and works from home, there is always something more I could be doing to grow, improve, or increase my business.

Three nights a week I will now have a reason to put on make-up and leave the house. I will show up, do my job, and do it well. It may be conceited, but even as I worked my way up in the kitchen, I always waited tables because I was good at it and it brought in good money. At the end of my shift, I will clock out and I will carry home with me an immediate payoff, not only tips, but what they represent: immediate feedback on a job well done. Something I rarely get, as my boss* is very hard to please and knows when I’m phoning it in.

*I’m referring to me, not the one at the pub.

Am I idealizing it? Yes, a little bit. There will be things that go wrong, there will be the occasional table that doesn’t go well, there will be nights with crappy tips, I know this, but this time around, I have a more experienced perspective. It’ll still be a night out of the house that didn’t cost me anything except time and a few hours where I was distracted from the many things that are entirely out of my control.

And? The best part? The very best part of all? I will actually get to talk to adults, on a regular basis, without typing! It’s only been almost 9 years.

So what do you have to get off your chest?

Click here to leave a comment on Sunday Confessional 2/19/2012 . We'd love to hear your say.