Emma Heuston - The Tracksuit Economy: How to Work Productively and Effectively From Home

For further information about this book, please visit:
www.vividpublishing.com.au/tracksuiteconomy

Copyright 2018 Emma Heuston

ISBN: 978-1-925681-96-3

Published by Vivid Publishing
P.O. Box 948, Fremantle, Western Australia 6959
www.vividpublishing.com.au

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EMMA HEUSTON believes there is an easier way. This book will show you how. Emma Heuston is a commercial lawyer and busy parent with a writing hustle on the side. She successfully balances these three vocations while working remotely from the far-northern coast of New South Wales. Passionate about re-framing the way we work, Emma believes professionals of the future will wear tracksuits and enjoy a more flexible way of life.

She is a finalist in the Lawyers Weekly 2018 Partner of the Year Awards (Commercial), a Practice Leader at LegalVision, a legal research author for LexisNexis and has been published in Child Magazine and online at Kidspot, Essential Baby, Flying Solo and Business Woman Media. The Tracksuit Economy is her first book.

Contents

Part 1 There is an easier way

The day I decided there MUST be an easier way was the day I found myself sitting in my car sobbing. I wasnt the only one letting loose with the ugly crying either. My 12-month-old baby was strapped into his car seat behind me adding to the chorus of heartbreaking sobs. We were stuck in a line of never ending traffic snaking from the Sydney CBD to the outer suburbs. My son was crying as a result of hunger, teething and long day care. I was crying because this was my grim reality 3 days a week and it was hard. Unbearably bloody hard.

Now I have proof that there is an easier way. I am living it. This morning I woke up, looked out over the lush green hills to the coast towards Ballina and Lennox Heads before having a leisurely breakfast with my husband and son. I put my son on the school bus and walked down the stairs, logged on and was speaking to a colleague by 8.30am. I have had a busy day filled with meetings and work, in between which I prepared dinner and set out my sons school uniform for the following day. I will log off at 3pm to collect my son from school and then do a little more work between 4pm and 5.15pm until we head off for Little Athletics.

What is your trigger?

The episode in my car was a trigger event. Most people will experience at least one trigger event during their life an event so life changing that it causes you to re-assess your life. I had two trigger events within close succession. The first trigger event was a near death experience. The second was parenthood.

Pre-pregnancy, I naively thought life would be the same after having a baby. Fantasies played out in my head, like the idea I would be back at work as normal within 6 months and effortlessly juggling parenthood with my established legal career, looking like a Country Road catalogue model to boot! What I didnt realise was how difficult (and expensive) childcare in Sydney was. Not to mention the added complication of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a generalised anxiety I couldnt shake following my near death experience.

I was 13 weeks pregnant in October 2011 when I woke up in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Royal North Shore Hospital. I was hooked up to a tangle of wires attached to a cardiac monitor. Where am I? Is the baby okay? were the only words I could get out. My husband explained to me (repeatedly, because I had short term memory loss and asked the same thing over and over again) that he had taken me to the Emergency Department (ED) of the hospital a couple of days earlier because I couldn't stop vomiting with severe morning sickness. Apparently, I had been given an anti-nausea injection in the ED and, as a nurse was attempting to insert a drip into my hand, I suffered a sudden and violent cardiac arrest dropping to the floor like a sack of potatoes. My husband was rushed from the room and I was defibrillated and resuscitated until my heart, and that of my unborn baby, started beating again.

After a week in the ICU and cardiac ward both my unborn baby and I were given a clean bill of health and sent home. Despite returning home, a battery of tests and a global feeling of anxiety stalked me after my release from the hospital. That feeling stayed with me during the remainder of my pregnancy.

The sudden cardiac arrest was a mystery. Every test and examination I endured after the incident came back clear. There was no explanation why it had occurred, or if would happen again. The inexplicable nature of the event clung to me like a vice, tightening my chest and shortening my breath when I thought about it. Anxiety about what the birth of my son might bring after a traumatic pregnancy saw me develop a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Simple things like being a passenger in a car filled me with dread.

Despite a relatively trouble free birth and being instantly smitten with my son, I had complications post birth, pushing me to breaking point. My caesarean wound required repair, necessitating re-admission to hospital (without my 10-day old son being able to stay overnight with me) for a further 5 days plus two additional wound repair surgeries. I was just getting on my feet again (finally!) when my mother in law arrived, suitcase in hand, for a 4-week stay from the UK. She had promised to help but caused mayhem, almost setting fire to our house and whirling through each room and my good graces like a cyclone. We didn't realise it at the time but she had the early stages of early-onset dementia during that stay.

When I was ready to go back to work 2 days a week in October 2012 we were living in Lane Cove and I was working in Mosman. 12 kilometres as the crow flies but 45 minutes in a car on average most days. My boss was agreeable to any part-time arrangement I proposed, but we could not get a child care spot anywhere on Sydneys north shore.

Ultimately we employed a nanny for a few months until we eventually obtained childcare, albeit the days of the week no one else wanted. That hard-won childcare spot was in Crows Nest, in between work and home. Working with a baby was a juggle but fortunately, my employer remained very flexible about my days and was great about accommodating me as I moved up to 3 days work each week at the beginning of 2013. While I appreciated that, it still bought me to that event that found me sobbing in the car.

Those 3 days a week during 2013 became a blur. Sleep deprived. Sitting in Sydney peak hour traffic with a crying hungry baby. Making sure I left work right on 5 pm to get to the childcare centre before closing time. Spending a precious hour with my son before bed. And repeat, again and again. Not to mention the constant sickness that came with having a child in a childcare centre. Multiple vomiting bugs and other strange illnesses spread to our entire family that year.

I tried to cram my other tasks, like washing, preparing meals and giving myself a few minutes down time into my non-work days. But the reality was my clients did not stop having legal problems on Wednesday and Thursday, just because I didnt have childcare. I experienced quite a few cases where opponent lawyers purposefully tried to take advantage of my part-time work schedule by endeavouring to schedule court events and mediations on my non-work days.