When I was expecting my first child I told my good friend Robyn that I was disappointed I had never finished Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.”

The way I saw it, I was just not smart enough to bring kids into the world even though I was in my thirties.

Looking back, I realize what an idiot I was.

Reading Tolstoy should have been at the bottom of my list of things I had to do before having kids.

I should have trained to be a marathon runner. Taught myself how to survive on no sleep, like the Green Berets do. And become a master yogi so I would be able to summon the calmness of all the earth.

This my friends is what it really takes to handle being a working parent.

I’m a little punchy this morning because I’ve had about 6 hours sleep total since Friday because my six year old was battling a fever and severe cold, and just when it looked like we were out of the woods, my daughter woke up before midnight last night with the same sickness.

The timing of this couldn’t be worse. But kids are all about no timing.

This week, MSN is scheduled to launch a new small business section I’m writing the start up columns for. I’m having a tough time finding just the right sources for my MSNBC.com column. And I have two Power Point presentations to prepare for a speaking engagement I have in Omaha next week for a great group called ICAN. (Find out more here.)

Yes, the Career Diva is complaining this morning, and I’m sorry for that.

I even found myself searching “work-life balance” on Google at 7 a.m. this morning and ended up casting a vote in a work-life survey on Forbes.com. (OK, I’m delirious.)

It asked, “My own work-life balance is?”

*All work and no play
*A little too heavy on the work side
*Not bad
*OK, except that my job is boring
*I don’t have enough to do at work
*Great–I’m out of work
*Terrible–I’m out of work

So far, 49 percent of those polled picked the top two. Guess which one I chose? Well, this morning I went with “all work and no play.”

That’s how I feel today. But, in all honesty, I do play sometimes. It just seems I’m not playing enough.

The pressure is on during tough times, and I’m feeling it big time lately. I’m saying “yes” to any assignments that come my way and bending over backwards for the editors I work for. Not that I don’t always do that, but right now no one wants to be seen as a slacker.

Turns out many workers are even bypassing flexible programs they’re offered at work so they don’t look like slackers too.

This from the Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch site:

The fear of layoffs is pushing many U.S. workers to silently cut back on some of their fringe benefits, concerned that the ax could fall, worker advocates said.

Joanne Brundage, executive director of Mothers & More, said the workplace environment was driven by a “silent fear,” causing workers to quietly forgo such items as flexible schedules, telecommuting and using policy-approved sick days, The Washington Post reported Monday.

A silent fear?

I’m not sure it’s fear. I just think during tough times people get tougher.

And it can be pretty tough on working parents.

One of the topics I’ll be discussing in Omaha next week is why there aren’t more women in leadership positions. I’ve got a bunch of points I plan on making, and a key one will be that women often have to pick up more of the slack at home.

That doesn’t mean women can’t be leaders. Many of the women CEOs and top managers I’ve interviewed over the years had kids but they to struggled with work-life balance.

How did they do it? I discovered there is no formula to follow, much to my chagrin. Each of these successful women found ways to make it work. Ways that worked for them.

The only common theme among most of them was that no matter how hard it got, no matter how many sleepless nights, failure was not an option for these women who often play down their struggles. “You just make it work,” one female senior vice president told me a while ago.

OK, I get that. But can’t we complain a little bit?

How do you all make it work? Was the concept of work-life balance made up by some single guy with a mental imbalance?

And, will I ever finish War and Peace?