Up until we moved from Milwaukee almost eight years ago, I've always worked full time. Often, I've worked more than one job. There was that first married summer that Rob said, "Don't work. Relax," which was wonderful, but other than that, I was a working girl and a working mom. I worked various jobs up until and through college. After that I was pretty focused on my career in education. I didn't feel like a duck to water with it, but I knew it would be a good vehicle to work toward becoming a college professor of literature and a writer. I liked the kids (especially in the most urban middle school conditions) and old school buildings and, of course, the school supplies. It was enough, but I got distracted and sort of lost my way.
I went to graduate school to become a principal, because I felt it was time to move to another level and to improve my knowledge base in education. I also got into a great program and met people who turned out to be good colleagues and mentors. It was all good, and the masters' degree bumped me up on the pay scale, but I was moving further away from the reasons I had become an English teacher. Life and my career progressed. I became a mother and turned down a great paying (and red-tape stuffed) position at the district central office. I was content with the decision to turn it down, but it was a mental struggle at the time. Rob got a job that moved us away, and I stayed home with newborn Aidan and pre-schooler Delaney.
That abrupt shift changed my life as I knew it and as I'd been plotting it for the future.
I loved having the unexpected opportunity to be home with my children and to be available to them 24/7. Always a homebody, it was nice to be there. I baked and cooked and cleaned and did picnics and all of that other fun mom stuff. I was able to free up our family weekend time by taking care of the house during the week. It was good, but I always felt a little (or sometimes more than a little) uneasy in my role. It was interesting to me to suddenly be a "housewife" or "stay-at-home mom" or whatever you want to call that role. Me, who'd worked since age 14 and had always been a worrier about if I'd be able to make ands meet, now home and financially secure if we were careful. My life was safe but strange and unfamiliar to me
Since then, I've managed to spend a few years feeling relatively at peace with my current place in life. However, the kids are getting bigger, and I've been feeling more of a push to figure out what the bloody hell I'm going to do with the rest of my life. This question mark hanging over my head makes me feel panicky and then irrelevant and then really crabby. There is a pattern to my quandary. It keeps repeating itself until I find something to distract me for awhile. Hence, the running and knitting and wine, I fear. There's no such excuse for the chocolate.
I don't have to jump into something right now. I'm grateful for that, but for a long time I've felt guilty about it. Rob and I discussed it this week, and I was finally able to put into words why I feel this muddle about me. The last time I was in career search and seize mode, I was in college. My friends were also working on planning their careers. There were high school counselors (whose help was minimal) before that who at lease made the question relevant at the time. After college graduation in the early years of my career, my friends again were in the same place. We adjusted our roles and added to our experience. We were resume building. We discussed our progress and plans.
Now, my friends are hip-deep in their chosen fields. Those who have changed directions have made the decision to start their own businesses and are in the process of making them successful. There are other friends and acquaintances who work full time as mothers and, let's be honest, lots of them resent it at least a little bit. Even the ones who love their careers are tired and overcommitted and miss their kids daily. I'm not going to start whining to them about all the choices I have to make and all the time without needing to bring in a paycheck that I have in order to make said choices. No way. I also have friends and acquaintances who are stay-at-home moms either in the early years of it or are content to leave it at that indefinitely. They rightly feel the job of mothering never ends, and they feel that they want to make it their primary lifestyle long after the kids grow. Good for them, too.
So, I'm on my own here. I am not in a rush to end my current role, but I'd like to start mapping out the next chapter. I need to plan, and that's always been one of my biggest strengths and one of my worst faults. Rob suggested that I spend the next while brainstorming without cutting out ideas for reasons of impracticality, pipe dream status, or just plain ridiculousness. I'm pretty quick to do that, so I'm going to try not to. I'm going to dream a little and research and think on things.
Here we go.
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