This post is from my sister-in-law, CC, from Comfortably Crazy. Thank you, CC!

The house is clean—well, mostly—the kids are in bed, and I’m not completely dog-tired.

Instead of working on my aprons, knitting, or reading one of the many books I’m halfway through, I sit here writing this in my journal (because I don’t feel like typing right now), and listening-to-but-not-really-watching the fourth Harry Potter movie yet again.

I know for many people, especially parents, that by the time you have time to do something, you don’t wanna. I hate that. I hate not having the energy to get things done. Having 501 unfinished projects from switching rooms (we do that a lot in our family) to doing my nails.

If you know me, you’re probably sitting in your chair reading this, nodding your head. I am probably the most organized messy person you would ever meet. On any given day if you dropped by my house, you’re guaranteed to find dirty laundry on the floor, possibly in the kitchen; dirty dishes in the sink; stacks of mail to file, or shove in a box or bag; piles of books to read; a jumble of shoes by the piano; and two kids either getting ready to kill each other or getting along reasonably well, depending on the phases of the moon. If you looked at my desk it would likely be covered with a myriad of crap. This is how I live.

Now, please don’t be afraid to stop by for a visit. With just an hour’s notice (or two, pretty please?) I can pull off a small miracle of cleaning and straightening. So just let me know if you’d like to come by sometime, okay?

I know you’re wondering where the “organized” part comes in, so I’ll tell you. If you were to walk into my kids’ rooms you’d see labels on the dressers along with bins for blocks, dolls, balls, dress-up clothes, shoes and various other toys. This is a good and bad thing. Kids like to just put stuff away; I like to put stuff away right. Most times my idea of right and their idea of right are nowhere in the same galaxy.

If you were to look on my computer you’d find documents listing my CDs and DVDs. You can browse CDs by title, genre, or artist; DVDs by genre or title, kid-safe or adult. (I mean “adult” as in Terminator or Resident Evil, not “adult” as in “ducking into a dark alley and buying something I wouldn’t want my neighbors to know about.”) They are all listed and shelved alphabetically. The CDs are numbered and coordinate with the numbers on the player.

At this point, you’re probably wondering why, if I can keep my kids’ rooms, CDs, and DVDs so organized, I cannot keep my entire house this way. It’s pretty simple really. I get distracted, I get sick, or I just plain get lazy.

I do enjoy having a clean house, but honestly, sometimes it stresses me out. Having a perfectly clean house is not comfortable. I’d much prefer to have things tidy than perfect. I’d rather have someone be comfortable with their kid dumping one (or five) bins of blocks on the floor than have them worrying about their kid making a mess.

I know people can have perfectly-kept houses and be happy. I’m just not one of them. I’ve heard of FlyLady, and I’m really not interested. I have to be accountable to me and only me. In that way I am selfish.

That’s how I’m trying to live my life, too. I’m trying to downsize and get rid of things we don’t need. Sometimes this means getting rid of stuff I do not want or need, even if I’ve had it less than a year or it was a birthday or wedding gift. Sometimes, this means buying something newer to make things fit better. There are things I will not get rid of, like my Barbies, my kids’ outgrown clothes, the porta-crib, and the two highchairs. But that’s my choice.

I think I’m finally at a point in my life where I’m comfortable with who I am. I may be overweight, but my kids and husband actually seem to like me this way. I could get down to 136 and be happy. I’d be happier at 126, or even better, 120. So why don’t I lose the weight? Because I know how to dress my body.

At 5’1″ and 156 pounds, I wear a size 14 Short Levis. I wear a large or extra-large maternity shirt. Yes, I just said I wear maternity shirts though I am not pregnant and will never be pregnant again without medical intervention or a miracle.

I’ve been saying for the last year that I should go to Motherhood Maternity to buy my shirts but never did it. Buying the first maternity shirt was accidental. I picked a shirt up at Ross that was just stuck in with the pants. It was cute, so I tried it on and fell in love. Only after buying it and wearing it did I look at the tag to see the label: Haute Maternity.

Now I’m convinced. I will do my shirt shopping in the maternity section, and when they ask when I’m due, I’ll smile sweetly and say, “November 2002.”

If you would like to guest post on this website, please email me (SAJ). I will be posting guest posts from now until September 15th.

This post is from Kristin from Camels & Chocolate. Thank you, Kristin!

I often wake up and have no idea where I am.

What? This isn’t normal?

This sort of travel vertigo has become a normal part of my daily existence. I literally live out of a suitcase. No, really. Even when home in San Francisco, I don’t see any point in unpacking, as I’ll likely be hitting the road a couple days later. I currently have three pieces of luggage sprawled out on my bedroom floor and just dig through their cluttered remains when I need to get dressed or find a pair of nail clippers.

You see, I travel for a living. Jack Kerouac had nothing on me. My business cards say it all: TRAVEL WRITER. For such a self-explanatory profession, you have no idea how often I have to explain myself.

“So…what do you do for a living?”

“Well, I’m a travel writer.”

“A what?!?!?”

“Travel. Writer.”

“What’s that?”

“Um…well…I travel…and then I write about it.” I try to say this in as unpretentious a manner as possible, but really there are only so few words that describe what I do.

But it’s not all fun and games (a lot of it is). For example, I’ve spent 54 out of the last 82 nights in a hotel, crammed in a boat cabin, or trying to catch my beauty rest on an overnight flight. While I love hotels, I really do, the appeal starts to lose its luster when you forget what your boyfriend looks like, have left something vital at home and couldn’t tell a stranger what shade of paint dons your living room wall. Poor Scott (we live together), always getting stuck with the shopping, chores and housecleaning. (On second thought, this isn’t a bad set-up for me at all!)

It’s a lot of time spent with my best friend and worst enemy: myself. Yes, an all-expense paid trip to the Indian Ocean is a complete dream, but it’s nowhere near as appealing when you realize you’re going to be there solo. With no one to share the experience, no one to turn to and say “Remember that time we were in Thailand…” months after your return.

Five years ago, I would have never felt secure enough to eat meal after meal in a restaurant alone. You get odd, I-feel-so-sorry-for-the-loser-in-the-corner, can’t-she-find-a-suitable-lunch-companion looks. Smug marrieds glare when you break out your leisure reading at the dinner table (I grew up in the South, where that is definitely considered rude). Creepy old men “take pity” on you (or at least act like it) and try to join you for coffee.

But I’ve come to handle it just fine; in fact, I even like the solitude…at times. Consequently, I’ve become one of those Americans who walks around with her Blackberry glued to her palm. I text and e-mail like it’s going out of style. It’s my way of not feeling so lonely when I’m miles away, and also reminding my friends and business contacts that while they may not see me on a regular basis, I’m still right there, completely accessible, via the daunting black hole of cyberspace.

Travel writing is an expensive job to have, that’s for certain. Sure, the hotels and flights are usually covered, but there are all sorts of little fees you don’t think about upfront. The things you must pay for yourself, like gas (which rose to as much as $4.99 a gallon in my neck of the woods in June), gratuity, parking, tax, and anything you may want to eat or drink while away from home (Trader Joe’s 100 calorie packs only get me so far).

In the declining state of the media, no publication wants to pay my $52 parking fee at the Four Seasons, even when they sent me there in the first place to write about the hotel for their magazine. I’m not about to complain, as I wouldn’t put it past any of them to hire a younger, more eager writer who is willing to work for peanuts to replace me. After checking out from any given establishment, I usually accrue somewhere between $60-$100 in fees, money I wouldn’t have spent if I were staying in my own home. Not the way I would choose to spend my own funds.

There are always the people who think they can do your job better than you. (I blame the Internet for turning everyone on the planet into “a writer.”) On any given day, I’ll receive five or more unsolicited e-mails and Facebook messages from people who want to break into my profession, people who have already enjoyed successful careers as lawyers, accountants, architects, real-estate agents, but think that my job sounds so glamorous and, well, easy that they could do it as well. These unwelcome notes read something like this:

Hi Kristin!

xoxo
Me

Um, no. I didn’t just wake up one day and think this is something I might want to do. It was many years in the making. I went to school—twice—for this. It took years of interning for free (since the age of 14), years of working thankless graveyard editing shifts, years of writing pieces where someone else got the byline, years of country-hopping and living in Europe on my own dime to establish myself as an expert in the field. I find it a bit offensive, as if I were to write a lawyer friend and say, “Hey! I woke up this morning thinking a life in court would suit me. Could you swing me a job at your firm?” without any prior education or experience.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not really sure how it all happened, this whole bizarre-o travel writing career. One day I was your average run-of-the-mill journalist begging anyone who was hiring for a decent paying job with benefits (a few years back, I interviewed for 38 magazine jobs in New York in three months—to no avail); the next, magazines and online pubs were beating down my inbox wanting to hire me (still no benefits, but I’ll compromise).

There are others who don’t really think what I do is a job. They think of it more as a fun hobby and kind of write off all of my travels as “vacation.” When I first met an in-law of my boyfriend’s family member, her first response to my profession was, “Awww, you write for some little magazines! Isn’t that sooo cute?” Puppies and babies are cute; my job is not.

Before I go any further, I should explain that on many assignments, you’re hauled around by someone from the tourism board from sunup to well after sundown, no time to soak in your surroundings, no chance to explore on your own time, no spare hour to hit the town. You only see what they want you to see. At the end of the day, it really is work. Just thousands of miles away from a normal cubicle.

You still don’t feel sorry for me, do you?

Well, I wouldn’t want you to anyway. It’s true, I loooove what I do. I mean, what other profession sends you to the Maldives, Singapore, Cuba, Florida, Maine, Vermont, Iceland, Holland, Germany and the Dominican Republic, all in the same calendar year? In 2008 thus far I’ve been to Brazil, Italy, the Bahamas, home to Tennessee a few times, and all over California for a couple guidebook assignments, with trips to Texas, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador on the horizon in coming months. I’m not complaining, because in some respects, I do have a dream job. I just want to be taken seriously, ya know? Is that asking too much?

I’ve always believed in the whole do-what-you-love mantra. I’ll never make it big as a travel writer. I’ll probably never even break six figures many years down the road. If I ever want to buy a house (have you looked at prices in the Bay Area recently? Utterly ridiculous!) I’ll have to sell some novels on the side, another pipedream that will hopefully come to fruition one day. As it is, I take on anywhere from 15 to 25 assignments a month just to be able to live comfortably.

But I’ve never once contemplated a career change. I don’t know what I’d do if it weren’t this. Should Scott and I ever decide we want to start a family (currently not in the plans, though every picture and cute anecdote about Baby Bug make my ovaries start to throb!) I’d probably have to choose another path of writing, as I’ve experienced firsthand that babies and airplanes are a deadly combination.

But for now, I’m not going anywhere—metaphorically, of course.

If you would like to guest post on this website, please email me (SAJ). I will be posting guest posts from now until September 15th.