52 reasons: Due Diligence
It was a dreary rainy Sunday here nearly fall in Vancouver. A perfect cloister it makes for spending extra time with kids or a latte or ... Often a good day to do some extra hours at work. Peace and quiet at work to catch up and get extra prepared for my busiest time of year that starts in about 10 days.
This afternoon as my kids rested I went into the office. But, not to work. Sure I shuffled a few emails and cursed the boot up time needed for my ailing workstation but I was really there to cop some photocopying power for our coming Block Party next weekend. Zoinks!
And, as I made my way up abandoned Sunday afternoon stairs to my office I was sad. Again. Like I have been so many times -- at times -- to not be doing the work. This return to work has not been simple for me, for a few reasons. Some were expected, many commonplace but others blindsided me. Like this one.
Such a sad lonely craving to be my former self in the employee department was not something I would have predicted. I have at times a profound yearning for the days of overtime. I tremble in the fear of regular hours, undertaking decisions with a hesitance characteristic of ill-preparedness. I worry constantly about the risks I take with directions or commitments because I don't have my old suit of armor. Hours and hours of overtime, overkill?, professional preening, contingency after contingency. Leadership borne of haggardness was my feeble mantle then. Now what?
One of the reasons I thought I could never be a SAHM is that I love my work too much. But in the rain of today it is tricky for me. I am torn between all my babies, including the one this job represents. I peer through the ages of work hoping to find, and wondering how, mothers manage(d). Catching a whiff of shit in all my machinations. Plucking myself up to find that it must be a crock of something. Picturing my Baba planting potatoes while her second youngest of five rocked the baby's basket. God help me.
The work experiment continues.
This afternoon as my kids rested I went into the office. But, not to work. Sure I shuffled a few emails and cursed the boot up time needed for my ailing workstation but I was really there to cop some photocopying power for our coming Block Party next weekend. Zoinks!
And, as I made my way up abandoned Sunday afternoon stairs to my office I was sad. Again. Like I have been so many times -- at times -- to not be doing the work. This return to work has not been simple for me, for a few reasons. Some were expected, many commonplace but others blindsided me. Like this one.
Such a sad lonely craving to be my former self in the employee department was not something I would have predicted. I have at times a profound yearning for the days of overtime. I tremble in the fear of regular hours, undertaking decisions with a hesitance characteristic of ill-preparedness. I worry constantly about the risks I take with directions or commitments because I don't have my old suit of armor. Hours and hours of overtime, overkill?, professional preening, contingency after contingency. Leadership borne of haggardness was my feeble mantle then. Now what?
One of the reasons I thought I could never be a SAHM is that I love my work too much. But in the rain of today it is tricky for me. I am torn between all my babies, including the one this job represents. I peer through the ages of work hoping to find, and wondering how, mothers manage(d). Catching a whiff of shit in all my machinations. Plucking myself up to find that it must be a crock of something. Picturing my Baba planting potatoes while her second youngest of five rocked the baby's basket. God help me.
The work experiment continues.
Labels: 52 reasons, the work experiment, women, work
posted by mo-wo at 8:04 p.m.
2 Comments:
I get this. Even after 2.5 years, I am still floundering, trying to be the employee I was and never satisfied with the one that I am and must be for now.
Ah. Free access to the photocopier. How glorious.
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