Crossroads

Damn. It’s been a minute, huh? I’m pretty sure my last blog post was about 1,000,000 years ago. Okay. Maybe that’s a little dramatic, but in terms of how much life has changed in the interim, I’m not too far off. When I dusted off this blog I was stunned to discover that the last time I posted my daughter was an infant and I was still grappling with new motherhood. In the meantime I did start and abandon another blog called Mommy’s Cold Coffee, but I haven't logged in since 2018. So let’s reacquaint ourselves, shall we? 

I re-read that last post and lo and behold, I was essentially in the same boat as I am today. At that time, my daughter had finally made it to the big leagues of kindergarten. So now she had somewhere to be all day, and I was left alone face to face with the big, gaping “Now What?” that was my life after stay-at-home momming for five years. It was a daunting prospect, so in that post I was talking myself down off the ledge, metaphorically speaking. Now my baby is in FIFTH GRADE-which is insane-and time is flying and she is growing up too fast, and all the feelings…you get the picture. Anyway, here I am sitting with the same questions: What’s next? What is my purpose? 

The best answer I could come up with back then was: Go out and get yourself a job. So I did. I decided to ease back into the workplace after a five year absence with a part-time position. So I ended up getting Crazy Hours Job. The people were great, the company was great. The hours sucked ass. The good news was I could leave before my baby woke up and was home when the bus dropped her off. Yay! The bad news was I was basically MIA all weekend, was exhausted all the time, and my bed time was earlier than my five year old’s. Boo. I hung in there for months but finally, my constantly aching back and missing out on family time wore me down. I quit with mixed feelings, but it was the right move for me at the time. I decided to just enjoy the summer and regroup at the beginning of the school year. 

By the time she started first grade we felt like major school pros, so we started the year feeling confident and hit the ground running. I was ready to work again, and another part-time job literally fell in my lap. We’ll call that one the Better Hours Job. My boss was my friend, the commute was a breeze, and the work itself wasn’t overly challenging. Great, let’s do it. Then…COVID. So now that job went from being a lovely, bucolic drive to the office to now I'm stuck back at home again. With everyone else. All. Damn. Day. And the walls were closing in. 

Time went by, we powered through, and now my husband was back at the office, and my daughter had thankfully been returned to her beloved, professionally trained teachers. I was ready to work full-time and more importantly, get out of the house. Way out. So I got myself a job in a corporate setting. The world was still a little crazy, but I was desperate to do something that felt normal and stable and-hey! I hadn’t even gotten Covid (yet) so the pandemic is just about over, right? No, not really. I caught it from one of my new co-workers soon enough...We’ll call this job the Joyless Sweatshop. As the name suggests, it wasn't exactly a fun place to work. The hours were “normal,” and the pay was okay, but now I was dealing with a real commute, and beginning to develop road rage. Every day after work I raced through traffic to pick up my kid from the afterschool program. Then, during the summer, I stuck her in every camp I could find that would let me leave her there until 6. She spent her time surrounded by bratty campers and negligent teenage counselors. She wasn’t happy, and neither was I. 

Okay. So the Sweatshop wasn’t a good fit, but another opportunity arose. Remote Job. Finally I could work full-time and do it from home! Wait…what? I thought you said you wanted to get out of the house? Well, I found out that human interaction isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Plus I didn’t like the people that were taking care of my daughter while I was working. Now I was (the only one) working from home in my yoga pants, I was bringing home a paycheck, and was there when my daughter got home from school. This job was great for a lot of reasons, was fairly flexible, and was a good fit with my newfound, pandemic-born introversion. Win/win, right? For a long while, it was. Until it wasn’t. Long story short, it was time to move on. 

So here I am-again-standing at the crossroads. Meanwhile, all the time spent alone over the past few years has turned me into a Crazy Hermit Lady with way too much time to think. I'm starting to feel like I’m just stuck in a hamster wheel, going nowhere fast. I don’t regret any of the choices that I made over the past five plus years, and was glad to contribute to the financial pot again after such a long absence, but is that really all there is? Get a random job I don't care about, count down the days until the weekend or my next vacation, then wake up and do it all over again? What if I want something more? I’m pushing 50 and have been wondering if it's too late to have dreams. But I'm ready to change my thoughts.

Here's a crazy idea: What about doing something I love? Is that allowed? Something that involves food and nutrition, wellness and self-care, writing, cooking and helping people along the way. You know, the things I’m trained and educated in. The things I care about. Can you follow your passions and help support your family? Does Dream Job exist? Let’s find out.