My hubby was thrilled. He landed a transfer to San Antonio, Tx… the city where we met as children. All our family lived there and it would allow for me to consider the unthinkable in Manhattan. He used all the obvious carrots to convince me—free babysitting, the choice of only living on one income, the idea of building a community whereas Manhattan was already built. I fell for it.

San Antonio has tiny satellite office; a good 400 miles away from any industry. I thought my days at the firm I’d worked for since college were numbered. Enter—the opportunity to work virtually! A very forward thinking leader in our firm had inherited a project she needed to staff and insisted on staffing it with a virtual team to save travel expenses and prove it can be done.  “In this day and age,” she often asserted, “If you cannot work from home you cannot do anything.”
I leaped at the opportunity to work with her and moved to Texas still not able to believe that such an opportunity had arisen for me. 

Working virtually with children was perhaps one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. My boss set up a strict stratagem that would keep us looking excellent to our client and any outsider. She held us firmly to extremely aggressive deadlines, reported diligently, and was able to accomplish more than many other teams participating in the same work. Our being part of this winning team added to our enthusiasm to work way more than 8 hours—sometimes diligently through the night.

Her rules were simple. As long as we delivered superb, excellent quality work, she didn’t care if we were working from the beach. In exchange for this flexibility, we had to respond to emails within seconds and needed to pick up every call—if not return it within five minutes. Our entire team used Communicator to Instant Message and we were required to indicate when we’d be back in a few minutes or whether we were out to lunch.

Although it was tough getting used to taking my blackberry to the bathroom with me, checking email after hours, and constantly thinking of the quickest, most efficient way to work so I could enhance the time with my kids, the reward was so great that I quickly got used to it.

The arrangement allowed me to come within fractions of “having it all.” I got my workout in rather than enduring a long commute. I knew what my boss wanted, and I teamed up with my co-workers so that all of our strengths could be utilized in the work product. Everybody won! Some days, I got finished by 3:00 and had a couple of extra hours with my kid. Other days, I worked straight through the night and delivered twice as much.

I was so energized by the environment that I decided to return to work only weeks after the birth of my second baby. This is where the whole scenario came tumbling down…

Attached: The happiest mommy on the block! ;)