this woman’s work

I’m sorta kinda ridiculously busy. Work, kids, homeschool, husband, home — I’ve got a lot going on and it holds together pretty much because I don’t look down when I’m walking on the tightrope. Being this busy means I have to cut some things out, especially so I can do things for me like working out every day (I’m working to get fit before I turn 40 in 2010 — and I mean truly fit and not just lumpy fit. I mean fit like pre-Noah’s arrival). And also so I can do things that matter to me but are a timesuck (I get a lot of adoption-related email from strangers and it’s important to me to give the people who email the attention they deserve). And the things that keep me sane (Thursday potluck).

Some things get cut and I don’t really miss them (television, gossip blogs although I’m reading more political blogs so it’s a trade-off). Other things get cut and it’s hard because the things have to do with people and there’s no way you can cut around people and not have the fall-out.

I just don’t have the time/energy to be the cheerleader when I’m at a place where any cheers that I have I need to use to motivate myself. And then sometimes I get resentful that folks expect me to be always standing there with my pompoms.

But here is the dilemma, my friends, who do you think picked those pompoms up in the first place? That’s right, me. So I’ve been trying to think — what made me do that? What makes me step into that role? What’s in it for me? Because unless I figure that out, I won’t really know how to quit setting folks up to annoy me.

I can’t put it all on the person/people who have these expectations for me because the truth is I’ve been more than willing to be the shoulder to lean on. The more I think about it, the more I know I needed someone to lean so I could prop myself up. It feels good to be the go-to girl; it’s a self-esteem boost. But it was also draining me and dangit, I got hurt when I tried to hand off the pompoms and they just got pushed back into my hands. So I dropped them. Ok, I actually threw them. And maybe I stomped away after.

Still it’s on me. I’m just not sure what to do about it and right now I’m too busy and tired to really have the energy to deal with it. Even though I know that the longer I leave it, the more of a mess it will be.

Brett goes back to work tomorrow and he will be missed. Things I will miss most:

• His morning pancakes
• The way he brings me a second cup of coffee while I’m sitting at my desk
• Being able to start the morning at my desk undisturbed
• Knowing that he’ll run the kids to the park and/or library and otherwise fill their lives with wholesome activity
• His annoying singing in the morning
• Having him open the window I can’t reach above my desk
• Chatting with him over lunch
• Talking myself through writer’s block will he patiently listens
• Watching him serve dinner with a flourish and more singing
• All the errands he somehow finds time to run

Well, now I’m a little sad.

This has been a difficult year full of growth and struggle. I’ve learned more than I really wanted to know about the inner-workings of my financial fears and we’ve worked through so much as a couple. I’m excited about this next stage because I think it can get us where we want to be faster (mainly, getting Brett home again with a more stable budget — unless he loves his job so much he wants to stay there, too) and I’m also nervous about keeping up this level of work with a more challenging schedule.

The flipside of the challenging schedule is that I’ll be forced to leave work with work instead of carrying it along with me. I think if I drop most of my pro bono efforts that it’ll go a long way to freeing up my time. I also am going to do a lot less in-person networking and more working the network I already have (because I need to think about marketing, which always seems counterintuitive when I’m really busy but eventually the slow times will come back). And having the one car is going to be annoying. (There’s a bus that we think runs near his job but how near and the length of the commute have not been confirmed. We do know that it’ll be a trade-off: Having a car or having Brett home in a timely manner. It’s not economical to drive him myself gas-wise.)

I got most of my business systems worked out so that I can work more effectively and it’s going to be easier now than it was before Brett came home. (I wasn’t juggling nearly as much work then but what I was juggling I was handling badly.) Besides, it’s only seven weeks of Brett being gone days and then it’ll be a lot easier. (I do my best work in the morning and tend to burn out by about 2pm, which is when Brett will be heading out when his schedule changes.)

So we will be back to a 2-income family. I made a full-time salary in my ePreg days but since then my paychecks have been very much of the part-time variety so this will be the first time in quite awhile that our coffer will have the benefit of two folks throwing money at it. We’re thinking six to eight months and then we’ll reassess barring any exciting developments on my end.

I will also have less time to write for myself for the next two months, which makes me sad/frustrated. Thing is, it’s about long-term plans and knowing that it’s a priority for our future does much to ease my grousing.

Sometime I want to write more about how it’s been to change out our traditional gender roles (husband working, wife carrying for kids & home) and how it has and has not impacted our marriage. I will say that it’s been a bigger deal for people around us than for us although it did force us to confront some of our ingrained ideas about how our family works.

They had to do with anxiety. Work anxiety (because I’m going on-site again next week and am having my usual stagefright); marketing anxiety (because I’ve got a speaking engagment in a week and again with the stagefright); friendship anxiety (because I haven’t resolved what is likely to be an unresolvable issue); time anxiety (because I have a lot to do and my ability to get it all done is somewhat hampered by other people’s schedule constraints).

I woke up and stared at the ceiling and worried.

Sometimes I feel like I’m getting away with something and am about to get caught around my work stuff. I like it so much and yet it pays me well so I keep thinking that I’m somehow doing it wrong and the other shoe is about to drop squarely on my head. Then I think that the trade-off is the endless chaos since every day is unpredictable and I’m entirely dependent on my own small self. I mean, working on commission can be scary (and that’s what freelancing is really — making a living by commission).

I met this guy who works for himself and he referred to his past few years of making his own living as a time of “unemployment” because he likes it so much even though he works pretty dang hard. That’s how I feel. How am I paying the bills when I’m unemployed? But then I have a night full of nightmares and say, Oh yeah, this is a fair wage. I forget that the anxiety of freelancing is a downside of the work because I think it’s a problem with me. I wouldn’t do that if I had a “real” job; I’d be able to identify the bad parts as being part of the gig because work is segregated from the rest of life.

Does that confusion make sense?

Like when a client doesn’t pay me it’s pretty easy to say, “Oh that’s a downside of being a freelancer.” But when it’s free-floating anxiety related to work I can’t always shrug it off as going with the territory. And I need to do that because part of my anxiety is that I feel like life is too good and I’m going to be punished for it.

I love my lifestyle so much that it scares me. Why is this? I suppose it’s some neuroses rooted in my childhood or something. I guess I don’t care about the why so much as I hope that I can get better about handling it with practice. I don’t exactly want to take contentment for granted but I’d like to enjoy it more without feeling like I ought to punish myself to balance my happiness and stave off disaster.