"Woman in Business" ...or am I just playing house ?

So this is me...sitting at my desk...as I am right at this moment.

I have to admit that the contents of the desk are slightly different today... The stack of four Starbucks paper cups are looking like some kind of mini modern art sculpture but are more representative of a secondary school science project...The hair is scraped back in a Monday-morning-get-the-smalls-to-school-quick-before-they-stop-serving-breakfast knot but its still me 'working' all the same.

The photo was taken last week for an editorial that I was asked to feature in the Bedford Times and Citizen. ( http://bit.ly/K9Y2p ) When I was initially contacted I was enticed by the discounted advertising rates and the fact that they had contacted me and not the reverse, meant my message was getting out. The paper had 'found' me as a result of being a member of the networking group 'Mums the Boss' (http://www.mumstheboss.co.uk/) they're fab - look at the site, read the blog, follow on twitter.... All of the small but numerous things that I had been busily working away at to try and get various marketing plans underway with my limited marketing budget were actually starting to lead to something.

Or am I just playing ?....Do you have those moments when you don't feel real ? When you wonder where the time went and how you got from where you were to where you are ?

At times I can't actually believe that I am Mum to not just one but two gorgeous little small people, real people ...no longer a "Paul" doll and a Cabbage Patch Kid. I have a house, a proper house, not a Wendy house built with plastic poles that we could roll down the garden. (I have the mother of all mortgages to go with the proper house but am not sure there was a childhood equivalent of that in the early 80's !). And I now have a business, my own business, my own responsibility, not a little pretend shop with my Casdon cash register that had to be turned upside down to get the numbers to go back down, but a proper business delivering a service to clients, hopefully making people happy in their surroundings.

So to then discover that my editorial was to be featured under the header of "Women in Business" was scary on a few fronts. "Women" surely I'm not old enough yet to be classified as a "Woman" yet ? "Wannabe" yeah, but at what age do I / did I become a "Woman" ?

And "Business" ...well I consider myself incredibly lucky on that front. I don't think of my work as a business. Business was my 'Previous Life', managing millions and the stress and long hours that goes with it. Ivy House Interiors is a love, its a dream and having lived the two lives how the two can ever be related I'll never understand.

So, I may have been titled a "Woman in Business" but I feel more like "Little Sarah being a very happy 33 year old". (33 ...can you believe it ?)