Meanwhile, I was a complete wreck at work. My heart just was not in the job any more. The breaking point came when The Little Empress was barely four months old and went on a bottle strike. Despite several tries with different bottles and even sippy cups, The Little Empress refused to drink anything that was not breast. My husband spent two warm days, waiting with my daughter in our truck, bringing her to me every three hours to nurse because she simply refused to eat any other way.

That was when I knew I had to find a way to stay home, for my daughter’s sake (as well as my husband’s sanity!) God blessed us as my husband found his dream job. While it paid far less than I made at the time, we decided to take the plunge: my husband would become our main source of income while I took care of our daughter and pursued a long held dream of mine to become a freelance writer.

Even when I got pregnant in 2007, I took for granted that I would be a working mother like many of my peers. Financially speaking, it made most sense for me to remain employed and for my husband to be the stay at home parent. I had worked so hard over the years gain the recognition and respect of my colleagues and believed that I would never willingly give that up. I planned to take my generous 3 month maternity leave and then return to my career as an IT infrastructure analyst in the financial software industry.

Before I became a parent, I thought I would be bored doing “nothing” other than taking care of the baby. (Yeah, you may smack me now.) I quickly discovered that “taking care of the baby” meant that there was never nothing to do! And, as tough as taking care of my daughter was, I also realized that I enjoyed being home with her. Being home with her meant that I missed nothing of her new baby moments. Every day, my daughter grew and changed, learning something new every day.  I realized that I did not want to miss even a moment of her life and began to seriously dread my return to the working world.

One of the worst things about starting a new career is having to start all over again. Technically I’ve been writing since September 2008 but aside from getting a few lucky breaks here and there (ie. scoring a stringer gig via the local newspaper as well as the subcontracting I have been doing with Berry Brewer which I am so very grateful for!), it has taken me this long to develop the confidence to try to find clients and contacts of my own.

While I am still working on building my network — including contacting local businesses that may be in need of a writer for press releases and the like — I would still like to see my Guru investment have some fruit. But I am, all too painfully, an obvious Guru newbie. While my profile is nearly complete, I have no reviews, no feedback, no income earned on my profile. I’m not too surprised that employers may be passing me up for more obviously experienced professionals — not many folks are willing to entrust their project to a newbie. But as the quandry goes, someone, somewhere has to give you your first break in order for you to get experience. And while I do have experience, it hasn’t been on Guru. So unless employers look at my profile and discover that yes, I am experienced and can write great things for them at a reasonable rate, I’m stuck.

Oh well, I’ve just gotta keep trying. Eventually, something will come out of this Guru thing. I just have to believe it.

One of the biggest changes that I have made is signing up for an account at Guru. I had been using ODesk but aside from a job here or there, I just wasn’t having too much luck. Plus, a lot of the jobs that were available were so ridiculously low paying that it just wasn’t worth it for me to even look at the listings any more. Signing up at Guru cost a pretty penny but I am hoping that I will make up the quarterly subscription cost in the first job or so. I’ll try it out for the summer and hopefully score a few jobs from there.