We were out of town
I didn’t update all weekend so that’s why the page has been blank.
Brett ran a half-marathon and was able to finish despite not training and being in recovery from the stomach flu. He said everyone was passing him, including the 84-year old man, oldest person in the race. Still, I am very proud of him. When he staggered across the finish line, one of the race volunteers said, “Are you ok, sir?” Brett said he never felt so old.
I had another nervous breakdown on Saturday. I’m averaging one a week over here. I went to bed on Saturday night determined to quit my job and woke up Sunday morning determined to keep it.
I hate my job. But really, it’s the best job I could have right now. I work from home, I make very good money, and did I mention that I work from home?
Now if my site wasn’t password protected, I wouldn’t write all this but here are the reasons I hate it:
–It’s just not my thing but I think having a job that is your thing is kind of a privilege and it’s not totally anti-my thing.
–It has very strange boundaries and very little instruction, which is a bit crazy-making. I live in fear of getting fired for screwing something up that I didn’t know was my responsibility. And when I ask for instructions, the result is so vague and it just makes them pay attention to me. I’m hoping that pretty much they forget me and are happy that I do stuff and keep paying me.
–While it doesn’t take a lot of time, it does take weird time. Like I’ll be planning to read to Noah and then something will blow up and I’ll have to sit on the computer for hours instead. I hate that.
–It demands that I be tied to the computer way too much. I get very worried if anything prevents me from logging in several times a day.
Still, it could be worse. A lot worse. For the first four years of Noah’s life, Brett made less than 25k a year. (At one point he made less than 20k.) That was much harder than this in some ways (although easier in others — go figure).
Last week I signed up for Netflix. Netflix! It’s the kind of thing that seems like wanton excess to me. Netflix! Hey, the library has many of these DVDs and sure you have to pick ‘em up and sure you have to return them rather quickly and sure it can cost a lot if you forget, but still.
See, not having money was all about living with inconvenience as a lifestyle choice. Like making everything from scratch. And having money has meant to step up on the conveniences in part because it’s necessary (I don’t have time to do as much food prep as I used to) and in part because it’s fun (Netflix!). But I didn’t mind living the other way and chopping more, going to the library more, doing without more. That was fine. Except when it wasn’t.
Saturday night I was thinking of the good parts — making my own pizza dough, always hanging out clothes (I use the dryer a lot more since I started working), making do. That’s a job in and of itself, right? And I liked that job. Except Sunday morning I woke up thinking of the not-so-good parts — the panic when the car won’t start, realizing Noah needs shoes but knowing we can’t afford them for two more weeks, having to refuse a friend’s invitation to coffee because rummaging under the couch cushions didn’t reveal enough change to buy a cup of tea.
It’d be best to have something in-between, I guess. Or even better, to get some decent coping mechanisms so I’m not wigging out all of the time.
I haven’t had much luck with coping mechanisms.
–I am realizing that I need childcare. I’m going to try on my mother’s helpers and see if that makes a difference. Come fall (maybe sooner) I’m going to try to find a part-time babysitter to come here in the mornings. Madison is old enough now that I’m not all freaked out about her not bonding to me and I think she’d enjoy it. Noah won’t care either way although he’ll complain about any change to his routine when he first hears about it.
–I need to say “no” more often. I hate to say no.
–I need to understand that unless I get childcare, writing for myself (the antiadoption article for Salon? Yeah, haven’t moved forward a bit) is not going to happen. Period.
–I need to learn how to segregate work and life.
This is the very most hardest part about working from home. Work is always in front of me. There’s always something I could be doing and I have a really hard time not thinking about (worrying about it) when I’m doing something else. I’ll be outside in the backyard watching Noah show me his super soccer moves and I’ll be fretting because there’s a work thing pressing and I know there will be email waiting.
See, back when I first got this job, about 3/4 of the things on my job description weren’t happening for reasons known only by the home office. No, that’s not quite true. They were happening but then they stopped happening and it coincided with Madison’s arrival so that was fine and I was thankful. I still got paid. But now things are stepping up again and I’ll have more than I did even at the beginning — totally appropriate, they pay me well and the demands aren’t unreasonable — and I kept trying to keep it together. However in the last three (four?) months, I’m just getting more and more swamped.
Thus the freak outs. Thus the need for better job boundaries and childcare. That is, if I want to keep paying down debt and getting movies from Netflix and sadly I do.
Other than the fact that I already have the childcare, we are having the same job experience. My working from home is sometimes a blessing, and sometimes makes me completely crazy. But I keep thinking to myself, “any job that I have will make me crazy sometimes. But this one lets me take the kids to art class in the middle of the day sometimes.” Oh yeah, and instead of coworkers in the office, I have the Internet to vent to.
There’s a child in Kindermusik who attends each week with her nanny. And one week, the nanny’s mom was sick, so the child’s mom came along. And it turned out that the mom is getting her Ph.D. in education and hired the nanny, because otherwise, nothing would get done.
And I sat there feeling foolish, because I’m trying to get the Ph.D. done, without the nanny, and it’s not working. At All.
The scariest part for me about hiring childcare to work at home is that all my excuses for not working disappear. And unlike you, I’m not getting paid for this work, so sometimes I have a hard time taking it (or myself) seriously. Why should we spend good money for me to pretend to finish the Ph.D.? It’s a dilemma.
But maybe not as much of one as I thought, if there are other mothers doing it. And in your case, with the money attached at the outset, I think it’s an easy call. Get the childcare, yes of course. It will probably make an amazing difference and be a godsend for your work. You’ll probably end up kicking yourself for not doing it sooner.
My good friend Rebecca, whose second book was just published (Far Traveler–highly recommend it) has four children, the oldest is just ending first grade and is homeschooled, the youngest will turn one in May. Without her childcare arrangements, Rebecca would get nothing done. And she needs to do it. As do you.
Good luck. I hate loathe despise anxiety attacks.
We have lived off of truly nothing. And we have the debt to prove it. There is something so nice about the fact that if I am really too tired to cook once in awhile a pizza doesn’t break us. Like you I consider small stuff a luxury. There are tons of people that would think I am being indulgent, and others that would think I am a martyr.
I hate Sunday night now, because it means that I have to go to work on Monday. Now I have a sweet deal. I work 30 hours a week at our little hippy school. I am off when the kids are off, I run my own program (jr hi electives and student life). I am treated with respect, I work with people I like and admire. I am doing something good. When I leave work, I leave it. I get to see my kids all day and hang out in their classrooms. I don’t make much, but it’s enough for the extras- guitar lessons, pizza, a birthday gift here and there. However I still am torn about working. I don’t want to go back to staying at home. I have done that for 12 years. But I miss the freedom of it. I told them next year I will only work 20 to 25 hours a week. I am hoping another day at home will help me not feel so torn. I know though there is no perfect solution.