'Work'

I seem to keep saying. I just don't know what is happening with work. I work. Full-time, Monday to Friday, but it seems be dwindling. I work in education so many, many, many of the librarians I know there would NOT have Monday to Friday jobs. We just don't allocate time that way based on our schools, at all.

But everywhere I am seeing it. Jobs downsizing. I would like to change my job but I have serious fears that if I do it will just be subsumed. I have seen this friends go on mat leave and when they come back no job, as if their contributions did not matter. Others choose to take reduced hours -- say between -- two mat leaves... then when the time comes, maybe you want to buy a house there is no full time work to help you afford it.

Are we feeling it? Is the economy gonna nibble away at every job, including the ones we work around as Moms. When we are ready to return full time will there be such a thing?

I have lots of people who tell me how much they love being part time or how they will never work full time but this baffles me. Am I an alien that I expect employers to offer a solid basis of full time positions for people in their operations? I hate when people act like full time is TOO MUCH. It isn't for me (well it is really) and it shouldn't be for anyone. If it is there is something kind outta whack with 'work' there?? I mean I feel grateful I don't work two jobs or 14 hours like many immigrant families. Basic full time being eroded is something to think about. What is the future?

Let's get small

I have tried twitter. It's tiring. But as fall approaches I wonder how many bloggers will be coming back to blogger. Twitter is certainly buzzing but I'm glad for blogs. Even if I haven't had the energy to write a real post for over a month.

Those things happen.

The most valuable thing I have taken from twittering is the 'nano' of everything now. It is reassuring that things are gonna 'get small'. You know I'm a Steve Martin fan so that's good. As a librarian I spent so much time recently trying to help people survive an overnight in a chilly sea of information without a survival suit. Didn't we all get bit by 22 apps last year at work? I look forward to a new outlook where all I have to do is get them to grocery store or the bank or where they are actually going. Obsessing about how we could go anywhere now that was tiring.

That Darn Cloister!

Mother.
Woman.

I think back on the night I chose that name sometimes. I was a very troubled working mom then. And, well, I still am.

I was coming from a meeting the other day, running crazy from one spot to another and thinking about how soft I am, a little afraid of my boss, worried that my performance would be sub-par again. Ah, ruminations on my careerly flibberty-gibbetness. I am a sexist twit. (or is that an 'a'?) I have always really felt that when it comes to work I don't know the concept of doing a woman's job. I instead to do a skirt-sporting, derivative version of a man's performance. I won't hide my measure of shame for that.

You know I come from a pretty soft space, terrified of(or otherwise distanced from) being one of the womyn. Being a mother has troubled that. I found in being a mother a fierceness and a duty so all-consuming it should be a highway to productivity and success. And, yet it suggests some other way, filled with an inexhaustible supply of authority, control, strength and intelligence, but only in that space apart.

What a rip.

Seven Minutes

I saw a dear mama-friend rushing to the driver's seat Friday. I'm late. I'm late. she crowed. I'm just 30 minutes late all the time now. She explained. I could tell it really bothered her. And, I know it.

With two kids the job schedule is wingy, you are often late. And, you're pretty sure all the time they are talking behind your back. Everyone noticing you come a lot late and leave a little early. And, within the painful first months especially when you are 30 minutes late knowing about the by-choice bit. It is slow with the kids, certainly, but only about 23 minutes slow by their pace. There's always those seven minutes. The seven you owe the world but hoard instead. Just two for your own reluctant separation, in general, and the extra pieces of time at each brow. Just like her, my baby boy, my little girl and a small, guilt-filled lingering.

Happy International Women's Day, ladies.

Bad Parenting Confessional: Time Off

At Christmas I was very sick. I was home a lot for the first time since I'd re-started working. It hurt a lot. Not so much the hurling and stomach cramps but rather the time passing. The time with my dear ones. Owie. I secretly set to mind to avoid them.

I haven't taken time off since I started working. I'd scoff and explain how the kids just get ornery and refuse to go back to daycare when I take too much vacation. But how much of that is true? More likely it's me.

It's sort of like a breakup. After all that time together I've now torn off the bandaid. Just blenderize the metaphors and don't look back. I am not with them so much late and soon. Better to keep it way; a few too many moments and I awash in most un-motherful vacilation, attention-seeking and ambiguity.

But then there are times like these, a Friday off and a little vacation. We went away the three of us. It was little like I thought it would be.

And, there isn't that just nothing like the excellent post I clearly conceived 'round midnight last night; my arms wrapped around Monday's child in the dark of his Uncle's house?

The Careerist

My job has its drawbacks, mountains of endless, unachievable objectives, surly co-workers and customers, low-grade professional rep building and the whole sudden fickle interpretations of my rights to my position, et cetera. But you know, when push comes to shove I am fond of the old gal. The cute corner office, the co-workers and customers (even when they are surly), the crazy 'just-do-it' pace of it all, the way they call me a goddess... and of course the children.

When I faced the option of leaving the my schools job I had to admit that going pretty much anywhere else would comparatively, completely, fry the social payoff I get. I have drunk the Oprah kool-aid, teachers are awesome! Working to support teaching and learning in a very tangible and active way has been the most rewarding work I have ever done, and the most maddening. Had to get that out.

When faced with the option of leaving the job I once again retreated to the math. There must be some perfect mix of time off I can set up with my banked vacation and gratuity time. They'll be flexible. I have heard about the mania for 'retention' and how employers accommodate really valued employees when asked. Hey, maybe I'm a valued employee.

Insert fading of the flex schedule fantasy... we have all heard so much about.

I think for the first few months of my return to work I was in denial. Sure, I had seen them out there, the working parents, but in the near 5 years before I was out/in/out so fast I didn't identify with them. Shopping at Safeway all hours of the night... taking kids along to catch more time with them... microwaving all the foods... and, of course, the requisite crying in the car. Those things will happen.

But to quit, to bail on work I want to do, to just take any job wasn't the cure I had plotted. How long do you think it would take till there would be more, if different, tears? And, those things matter. I was told by an older colleague that her generation was more willing to sacrifice things for their families than us parents today. I wonder a lot about that. I will, and do, ask myself everyday if I am unwilling to sacrifice myself enough. But work is work, mine with some rewards, sure, but still fundamentally toil. I'm not on a daypass from motherhood.

Let me put it this way, just because I consider work/life balance a misnomer doesn't mean my work is my life.

There is no -- such thing as -- Plan B

I was offered a new job last week. And, I did not take it.

There is pretty large part of me that feels like a rotten mother to have taken a pass on a less stressful part-time job. After what I said I should have been grabbed it?

A little earlier than that post I was in conversation with a dad of a young child who outlined how his partner was at home since she was not, and I quote, a careerist. What the hell is that? A careerist? I got non-careerist envy right away. You know me, who can't quite hunt down a job with twelve resumes and a nanny. Me, who has only worked one of the last 4 years, well, now one and a half. Please don't get me wrong I'm not out to slag dads for their perceptions of 'careerism'.

I told the folks who'd offered me the job the truth. I am committed to things I just can't depart right now. So when? The hidden gift of the position was that it was a 3 year term. It made me try hard to picture where I need to be in 2012. I realize now that I really have a pile to sort out over the next 3 years. I am not sure where I need to go but at least I have a better idea of how long it might take me. Trying to transition to tomorrow in time for yesterday had been entirely soul-sucking.

I remain, yours, until after the revolution, Mo-wo

Rank

I have had some stumbles at work. I don't know what to call it. For a while I said I kept screwing stuff up by being, I don't know, too... too... too 'deferential'.

Is that it? Is it being out of the work setting for two years and lacking confidence? Or it is the gaps in credibility with the current trends, etc.

I think it might have more to do with that idea deference. Deference and authority. When I became mother-woman, I recognized I changed. Changed caste in a way. At home the buck stops with me. I have now settled into this authority. But it has not been easy.

The unease of it has reverberated through my return to work. As I navigate new circles of influence, industry and action I delay, defer and abide. I guess because I can, and face it I'm tired. And because the idea of facing a matrix of status and rank where the buck doesn't stop with me is out of sync with where I'm at right now.

Man Up

I lie.
I lie.
I lie.

Call after call. Colleague after colleague asks. How is it going?

"Fine", I say.
"Well."
"We've worked it out."

There is really no other answer. Mothers work. Face it, mo-wo! To mention my longing for them is beyond pointless. Preaching to the choir. I think I won't mention for fear of the commiseration. To have the truly commonplace nature of my agony be borne full force back upon me.

It is a very demanding time right now and our times together seem criminally brief.
I miss them so much.
And, I lie about it over and over and over.

Tomorrow maybe I just won't answer the phone.

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.